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

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

The Dunce

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Vigil

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Mistletoe

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

England

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

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

To J.S.

The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open wold,
And gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.

And me this knowledge bolder made,
Or else I had not dared to flow
In these words toward you, and invade
Even with a verse your holy woe.

Tis strange that those we lean on most,
Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,
Fall into shadow, soonest lost:
Those we love first are taken first.

God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but, when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.

This is the curse of time. Alas!
In grief I am not all unlearnd;
Once thro mine own doors Death did pass;
One went, who never hath returnd.

...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ophelia

There runs a crisscross pattern of small leaves
Espalier, in a fading summer air,
And there Ophelia walks, an azure flower,
Whom wind, and snowflakes, and the sudden rain
Of love's wild skies have purified to heaven.
There is a beauty past all weeping now
In that sweet, crooked mouth, that vacant smile;
Only a lonely grey in those mad eyes,
Which never on earth shall learn their loneliness.
And when amid startled birds she sings lament,
Mocking in hope the long voice of the stream,
It seems her heart's lute hath a broken string.
Ivy she hath, that to old ruin clings;
And rosemary, that sees remembrance fade;
And pansies, deeper than the gloom of dreams;
But ah! if utterable, would this earth
Remain the base, unreal thing it is?
Better be out of sight of p...

Walter De La Mare

Sorrow and the Flowers. - A Memorial Wreath to C. F.

    Sorrow:

A garland for a grave! Fair flowers that bloom,
And only bloom to fade as fast away,
We twine your leaflets 'round our Claudia's tomb,
And with your dying beauty crown her clay.

Ye are the tender types of life's decay;
Your beauty, and your love-enfragranced breath,
From out the hand of June, or heart of May,
Fair flowers! tell less of life and more of death.

My name is Sorrow. I have knelt at graves,
All o'er the weary world for weary years;
I kneel there still, and still my anguish laves
The sleeping dust with moaning streams of tears.

And yet, the while I garland graves as now,
I bring fair wreaths to deck the place of woe;
Whilst joy is crowning many a living brow,
I crown the poor, frail dust that sleeps below.

Abram Joseph Ryan

A Song Before Grief.

Sorrow, my friend,
When shall you come again?
The wind is slow, and the bent willows send
Their silvery motions wearily down the plain.
The bird is dead
That sang this morning through the summer rain!

Sorrow, my friend,
I owe my soul to you.
And if my life with any glory end
Of tenderness for others, and the words are true,
Said, honoring, when I'm dead, -
Sorrow, to you, the mellow praise, the funeral
wreath, are due.

And yet, my friend,
When love and joy are strong,
Your terrible visage from my sight I rend
With glances to blue heaven. Hovering along,
By mine your shadow led,
"Away!" I shriek, "nor dare to work my new-sprung mercies wrong!"

Still, you are near:
Who can your care withstand?
When deep eternity shall l...

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

The Ghost

    Peace in thy hands,
    Peace in thine eyes,
    Peace on thy brow;
Flower of a moment in the eternal hour,
    Peace with me now.

    Not a wave breaks,
    Not a bird calls,
    My heart, like a sea,
Silent after a storm that hath died,
    Sleeps within me.

    All the night's dews,
    All the world's leaves,
    All winter's snow
Seem with their quiet to have stilled in life's dream
    All sorrowing now.

Walter De La Mare