I Can't Abear

I can't abear a Butcher,
    I can't abide his meat,
The ugliest shop of all is his,
    The ugliest in the street;
Bakers' are warm, cobblers' dark,
    Chemists' burn watery lights;
But oh, the sawdust butcher's shop,
    That ugliest of sights!

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 Child In The Story Awakes

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Earth Folk

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Voices

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

The Song Of The Mad Prince

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

English

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All But Blind

All but blind
    In his chambered hole
Gropes for worms
    The four-clawed Mole.

All but blind
    In the evening sky
The hooded Bat
    Twirls softly by.

All but blind
    In the burning day
The Barn-Owl blunders
    On her way.

And blind as are
    These three to me,
So, blind to Some-one
    I must be.

Walter De La Mare

Fear

I know where lurk
The eyes of Fear;
I, I alone,
Where shadowy-clear,
Watching for me,
Lurks Fear.

'Tis ever still
And dark, despite
All singing and
All candlelight,
'Tis ever cold,
And night.

He touches me;
Says quietly,
"Stir not, nor whisper,
I am nigh;
Walk noiseless on,
I am by!"

He drives me
As a dog a sheep;
Like a cold stone
I cannot weep.
He lifts me
Hot from sleep

In marble hands
To where on high
The jewelled horror
Of his eye
Dares me to struggle
Or cry.

No breast wherein
To chase away
That watchful shape!
Vain, vain to say
"Haunt not with night
The Day!"

Walter De La Mare

The Tailor

Few footsteps stray when dusk droops o'er
The tailor's old stone-lintelled door:
There sits he stitching half asleep,
Beside his smoky tallow dip.
'Click, click,' his needle hastes, and shrill
Cries back the cricket 'neath the sill.
Sometimes he stays, and o'er his thread
Leans sidelong his old tousled head;
Or stoops to peer with half-shut eye
When some strange footfall echoes by;
Till clearer gleams his candle's spark
Into the dusty summer dark.
Then from his crosslegs he gets down,
To find how dark the evening's grown;
And hunched-up in his door he'll hear
The cricket whistling crisp and clear;
And so beneath the starry grey
Will mutter half a seam away.

Walter De La Mare

Shop

So, friend, your shop was all your house!
Its front, astonishing the street,
Invited view from man and mouse
To what diversity of treat
Behind its glass, the single sheet!

What gimcracks, genuine Japanese:
Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog;
Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese;
Some crush-nosed human-hearted dog:
Queer names, too, such a catalogue!

I thought And he who owns the wealth
Which blocks the windows vastitude,
Ah, could I peep at him by stealth
Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude
On house itself, what scenes were viewed!

If wide and showy thus the shop,
What must the habitation prove?
The true house with no name a-top,
The mansion, distant one remove,
Once get him off his traffic-groove!

Pictures he l...

Robert Browning

The Empty House

See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies -
"Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent, of heaven's ways,
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,
On secrets hidden from sight."

"Secrets," sighs the night-wind,
"Vacancy is all I find;
Every keyhole I have made
Wails a summons, faint and sad,
No voice ever answers me,
    Only vacancy."
"Once, once ..." the cricket shrills,
And far and near the quiet fills
With its tiny voice, and then
    Hush falls again.

Mute shadows creeping slow
Mark how the hours go.
Every stone is mouldering slow.
And the least winds that blow
Some minutest atom shake,
Some fretting ruin make
In roof and walls...

Walter De La Mare

The Little Creature

Twinkum, twankum, twirlum and twitch
My great grandam - She was a Witch.
Mouse in wainscot, Saint in niche -
My great grandam - She was a Witch;
Deadly nightshade flowers in a ditch -
My great grandam - She was a Witch;
Long though the shroud it grows stitch by stitch -
My great grandam - She was a Witch;
Wean your weakling before you breech -
My great grandam - She was a Witch;
The fattest pig's but a double flitch -
My great grandam - She was a Witch;
Nightjars rattle, owls scritch -
My great grandam - She was a Witch.

    Pretty and small,
    A mere nothing at all,
    Pinned up sharp in the ghost of a shawl,
    She'd straddle her down to the kirkyard wall,
    And mutter and whisper and call; and call -
    And - call.

Red...

Walter De La Mare