Envoi

Child, do you love the flower
Ashine with colour and dew
Lighting its transient hour?
So I love you.

The lambs in the mead are at play,
'Neath a hurdle the shepherd's asleep;
From height to height of the day
The sunbeams sweep.

Evening will come. And alone
The dreamer the dark will beguile;
All the world will be gone
For a dream's brief while.

Then I shall be old; and away:
And you, with sad joy in your eyes,
Will brood over children at play
With as loveful surmise.

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

Falstaff

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Night

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Cumberland

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Chicken

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

English

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Envoy

There clung three roses to a stem,
Did all their hues of summer don,
But came a wind and troubled them,
    And all were gone.

I heard three bells in unison
Clap out some transient heart's delight,
Time and the hour brought silence on
    And the dark night.

Doth not Orion even set!
O love, love, prove true alone,
Till youthful hearts ev'n love forget,
    Then, child, begone!

Walter De La Mare

Dreams

Be gentle, O hands of a child;
Be true: like a shadowy sea
In the starry darkness of night
Are your eyes to me.

But words are shallow, and soon
Dreams fade that the heart once knew;
And youth fades out in the mind,
In the dark eyes too.

What can a tired heart say,
Which the wise of the world have made dumb?
Save to the lonely dreams of a child,
'Return again, come!'

Walter De La Mare

Cecil

Ye little elves, who haunt sweet dells,
Where flowers with the dew commune,
I pray you hush the child, Cecil,
    With windlike song.

O little elves, so white she lieth,
Each eyelid gentler than the flow'r
Of the bramble, and her fleecy hair
    Like smoke of gold.

O little elves, her hands and feet
The angels muse upon, and God
Hath shut a glimpse of Paradise
    In each blue eye.

O little elves, her tiny body
Like a white flake of snow it is,
Drooping upon the pale green hood
    Of the chill snowdrop.

O little elves, with elderflower,
And pimpernel, and the white hawthorn,
Sprinkle the journey of her dreams:
    And, little elves,

Call to her magically sweet,
Lest of her very tenderness
She do fors...

Walter De La Mare

Motley

Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee;
And thou, poor Innocency;
And love - a Lad with broken wing;
And Pity, too:
The Fool shall sing to you,
As Fools will sing.

Ay, music hath small sense,
And a tune's soon told,
And Earth is old,
And my poor wits are dense;
Yet have I secrets, - dark, my dear,
To breathe you all: Come near.
And lest some hideous listener tells,
I'll ring my bells.

They are all at war! -
Yes, yes, their bodies go
'Neath burning sun and icy star
To chaunted songs of woe,
Dragging cold cannon through a mire
Of rain and blood and spouting fire,
The new moon glinting hard on eyes
Wide with insanities!

Hush!... I use words
I hardly know the meaning of;
And the mute birds
Are glancing...

Walter De La Mare

The Child In The Story Awakes

The light of dawn rose on my dreams,
    And from afar I seemed to hear
In sleep the mellow blackbird call
    Hollow and sweet and clear.

I prythee, Nurse, my casement open,
    Wildly the garden peals with singing,
And hooting through the dewy pines
    The goblins all are winging.

O listen the droning of the bees,
    That in the roses take delight!
And see a cloud stays in the blue
    Like an angel still and bright.

The gentle sky is spread like silk,
    And, Nurse, the moon doth languish there,
As if it were a perfect jewel
    In the morning's soft-spun hair.

The greyness of the distant hills
    Is silvered in the lucid East,
See, now the sheeny-plumèd cock
    Wags haughtily his crest.

'O come you out...

Walter De La Mare

Evening

When twilight darkens, and one by one,
The sweet birds to their nests have gone;
When to green banks the glow-worms bring
Pale lamps to brighten evening;
Then stirs in his thick sleep the owl
Through the dewy air to prowl.

Hawking the meadows swiftly he flits,
While the small mouse atrembling sits
With tiny eye of fear upcast
Until his brooding shape be past,
Hiding her where the moonbeams beat,
Casting black shadows in the wheat.

Now all is still: the field-man is
Lapped deep in slumbering silentness.
Not a leaf stirs, but clouds on high
Pass in dim flocks across the sky,
Puffed by a breeze too light to move
Aught but these wakeful sheep above.

O what an arch of light now spans
These fields by night no longer Man's!
Their...

Walter De La Mare