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:
- When I Married Halld R Laxness
- To a woman, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: A une femme by T. Wignesan.
- Searching by Mike Yuan
- Harry Ploughman poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Irony poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Twa Sisters poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Николай Некрасов – Встреча душ
- Answering Vice-Prefect Zhang by Wang Wei
- A Child’s Prayer by Siegfried Sassoon
- From ‘Arcades’ poem – John Milton poems
- September by Ted Hughes
- Олег Григорьев – Я сам себя в пальто одел
- An Answer poem – Alfred Austin
- America To Great Britain by Washington Allston
- Олег Бундур – Скука
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
- Ольга Седакова – Сновидец
- Ольга Седакова – Сказочка
- Ольга Седакова – Сказка
- Ольга Седакова – Selva selvaggia
- Ольга Седакова – С нежностью и глубиной
- Ольга Седакова – Путешествие волхвов
- Ольга Седакова – Прощание
- Ольга Седакова – Прибавления к “Старым песням”
- Ольга Седакова – Преданья о подвижниках похожи
- Ольга Седакова – Последний читатель
- Ольга Седакова – Плач
- Ольга Седакова – Первая тетрадь
- Ольга Седакова – Памяти поэта
- Ольга Седакова – Памяти одной старухи
- Ольга Седакова – Ни темной старины заветные преданья
- Ольга Седакова – Неужели, Мария, только рамы скрипят
- Ольга Седакова – Несчастен
- Ольга Седакова – Музыка
- Ольга Седакова – Московские картинки
- Ольга Седакова – Маленькое посвящение Владимиру Ивановичу Хвостину
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.