Alone

The abode of the nightingale is bare,
Flowered frost congeals in the gelid air,
The fox howls from his frozen lair:
    Alas, my loved one is gone,
    I am alone:
    It is winter.

Once the pink cast a winy smell,
The wild bee hung in the hyacinth bell,
Light in effulgence of beauty fell:
    Alas, my loved one is gone,
    I am alone:
    It is winter.

My candle a silent fire doth shed,
Starry Orion hunts o'erhead;
Come moth, come shadow, the world is dead:
    Alas, my loved one is gone,
    I am alone:
    It is winter.

Walter De La Mare

Walter De La Mare was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist, best remembered for his works for children and his poem "The Listeners". Born in 1873 in Charlton, Kent, De La Mare's unique blend of haunting, dreamlike imagery and masterful command of language earned him a lasting place in English literature. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1953, and his works continue to be celebrated for their ethereal and evocative quality.

Walter De La Mare

Envoy

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Polonius

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Cumberland

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Ages Ago

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

English

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Winter

Clouded with snow
The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
Alone sings now.

The rayless sun,
Day's journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
Unearthly white.

Thick draws the dark,
And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
Floats the white moon.

Walter De La Mare

Snow

No breath of wind,
No gleam of sun -
Still the white snow
Swirls softly down -
Twig and bough
And blade and thorn
All in an icy
Quiet, forlorn.
Whispering, nestling,
Through the air,
On sill and stone,
Roof - everywhere,
It heaps its powdery
Crystal flakes,
Of every tree
A mountain makes:
Till pale and faint
At shut of day,
Stoops from the West
One wintry ray.
Then, feathered in fire,
Where ghosts the moon,
A robin shrills
His lonely tune;
And from her dark-gnarled
Yew-tree lair
Flits she who had been
In hiding there.

Walter De La Mare

The Fairy In Winter

There was a Fairy - flake of winter -
Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence,
Sister crystal to crystal sighing,
Making of meadow argent palace,
    Night a star-sown solitude,
Cried 'neath her frozen eaves, "I burn here!"

Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like,
Wand within fingers, locks enspangled,
Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,
She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow -
Green as stalks of weeds in water -
Breathed: stirred.

Rilled from her heart the ichor, coursing,
Flamed and awoke her slumbering magic.
Softlier than moth's her pinions trembled;
Out into blackness, light-like, she flittered,
Leaving her hollow cold, forsaken.

In air, o'er crystal, rang twangling night-wind.
Bare, rimed pine-woods murmured lament.

Walter De La Mare

The Dwelling-Place

Deep in a forest where the kestrel screamed,
Beside a lake of water, clear as glass,
The time-worn windows of a stone house gleamed,
    Named only 'Alas.'

Yet happy as the wild birds in the glades
Of that green forest, thridding the still air
With low continued heedless serenades,
    Its heedless people were.

The throbbing chords of violin and lute,
The lustre of lean tapers in dark eyes,
Fair colours, beauteous flowers, dainty fruit
    Made earth seem Paradise

To them that dwelt within this lonely house:
Like children of the gods in lasting peace,
They ate, sang, danced, as if each day's carouse
    Need never pause, nor cease.

Some might cry, Vanity! to a weeping lyre,
Some in that deep pool mock their longings vain,
Came...

Walter De La Mare

For All The Grief

For all the grief I have given with words
May now a few clear flowers blow,
In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds,
    Where the lonely go.

For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me
Be a dark, cool water calling - calling
To the footsore, benighted, solitary,
    When the shadows are falling.

O, be beauty for all my blindness,
A moon in the air where the weary wend,
And dews burdened with loving-kindness
    In the dark of the end.

Walter De La Mare

The Children Of Stare

Winter is fallen early
On the house of Stare;
Birds in reverberating flocks
Haunt its ancestral box;
Bright are the plenteous berries
In clusters in the air.

Still is the fountain's music,
The dark pool icy still,
Whereupon a small and sanguine sun
Floats in a mirror on,
Into a West of crimson,
From a South of daffodil.

'Tis strange to see young children
In such a wintry house;
Like rabbits' on the frozen snow
Their tell-tale footprints go;
Their laughter rings like timbrels
'Neath evening ominous:

Their small and heightened faces
Like wine-red winter buds;
Their frolic bodies gentle as
Flakes in the air that pass,
Frail as the twirling petal
From the briar of the woods.

Above them silence lours,<...

Walter De La Mare