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:
- Robert Burns: Damon And Sylvia: Fragment
- Come down, O Maid poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Carnal Knowledge by Rebecca Elson
- The Evening Soup, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: La Soupe du soir by T. Wignesan
- In a Sombre Mood by Satish Verma
- Testimony by Seamus Heaney
- Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself by Wallace Stevens
- Locked Out by Robert Frost
- Олег Григорьев – Я дверь в коридор отворил
- V by Tony Harrison
- Pensive and Faltering. by Walt Whitman
- Empowering Women in Gambia
- Василий Казин – Гармонист
- Let me be to Thee as the circling bird poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Two April Mornings by William Wordsworth
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
- Upon The Sight Of A Beautiful Picture Painted By Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart by William Wordsworth
- To The Small Celandine by William Wordsworth
- To The Poet, John Dyer by William Wordsworth
- To Sleep by William Wordsworth
- To Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bart From the South-West Coast Or Cumberland 1811 by William Wordsworth
- To Joanna by William Wordsworth
- To A Young Lady Who Had Been Reproached For Taking Long Walks In The Country by William Wordsworth
- To a Sky-Lark by William Wordsworth
- ‘Tis Said, That Some Have Died For Love by William Wordsworth
- The Vaudois by William Wordsworth
- The Two Thieves; Or, The Last Stage Of Avarice by William Wordsworth
- The Two April Mornings by William Wordsworth
- The Thorn by William Wordsworth
- The Tables Turned by William Wordsworth
- The Sun Has Long Been Set by William Wordsworth
- The Stars Are Mansions Built By Nature’s Hand by William Wordsworth
- The Sparrow’s Nest by William Wordsworth
- The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth
- The Simplon Pass by William Wordsworth
- The Shepherd, Looking Eastward, Softly Said by William Wordsworth
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.