A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
What did I study in your School of Night?
When your mouth’s first unfathomable yes
Opened your body to be my book, I read
My answers there and learned the spell aright,
Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess
What spirits it raised nor where their questions led.
Those others, familiar tenants of your sleep,
The whisperers, the grave somnambulists
Whose eyes turn in to scrutinize their woe,
The giant who broods above the nightmare steep,
That sleeping girl, shuddering, with clenched fists,
A vampire baby suckling at her toe,
They taught me most. The scholar held his pen
And watched his blood drip thickly on the page
To form a text in unknown characters
Which, as I scanned them, changed and changed again:
The lines grew bars, the bars a Delphic cage
And I the captive of his magic verse.

A few random poems:
- Astrophel And Stella-Sonnet XXXI by Sir Philip Sidney
- Totem by Sylvia Plath
- Олег Бундур – Родня
- Unsaid by Victoria Bukofske
- A Dream of Rodney King by Mary TallMountain
- The Theatre of Illusion by Pierre Corneille
- Champagne 1914 15
- Happiness poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Caught in a Net by Vachel Lindsay
- Юрий Верховский – Вариации на тему Пушкина
- Parnell by William Butler Yeats
- The Passing Show poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Orlando Furioso Canto 20 by Ludovico Ariosto
- L’Envoi by Rudyard Kipling
- Psalm 87 poem – John Milton poems
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Ballade Made In The Hot Weather by William Ernest Henley
- Back-View by William Ernest Henley
- Attadale, West Highlands by William Ernest Henley
- Arabian Night’s Entertainments by William Ernest Henley
- Apparition by William Ernest Henley
- Anterotics by William Ernest Henley
- Andante Con Moto by William Ernest Henley
- Allegro Maestoso by William Ernest Henley
- After by William Ernest Henley
- A Wink From Hesper by William Ernest Henley
- A Desolate Shore by William Ernest Henley
- A Child by William Ernest Henley
- A Bowl Of Roses by William Ernest Henley
- The Swamp Fox by William Gilmore Simms
- The Lost Pleiad by William Gilmore Simms
- The Decay Of A People by William Gilmore Simms
- The Bard by William Gilmore Simms
- The Angel Of The Church by William Gilmore Simms
- Sumter In Ruins by William Gilmore Simms
- Song In March by William Gilmore Simms
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.