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

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

Virtue

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Old Susan

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

The Journey

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Hapless

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

English

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The Unchanging

After the songless rose of evening,
Night quiet, dark, still,
In nodding cavalcade advancing
Starred the deep hill:
You, in the valley standing,
In your quiet wonder took
All that glamour, peace, and mystery
In one grave look.
Beauty hid your naked body,
Time dreamed in your bright hair,
In your eyes the constellations
Burned far and fair.

Walter De La Mare

Remembrance

The sky was like a waterdrop
In shadow of a thorn,
Clear, tranquil, beautiful,
Dark, forlorn.

Lightning along its margin ran;
A rumour of the sea
Rose in profundity and sank
Into infinity.

Lofty and few the elms, the stars
In the vast boughs most bright;
I stood a dreamer in a dream
In the unstirring night.

Not wonder, worship, not even peace
Seemed in my heart to be:
Only the memory of one,
Of all most dead to me.

Walter De La Mare

Silence

With changeful sound life beats upon the ear;
Yet striving for release
The most delighting string's
Sweet jargonings,
The happiest throat's
Most easeful, lovely notes
Fall back into a veiling silentness.

Even 'mid the rumour of a moving host,
Blackening the clear green earth,
Vainly 'gainst that thin wall
The trumpets call,
Or with loud hum
The smoke-bemuffled drum:
From that high quietness no reply comes forth.

When all at peace, two friends at ease alone
Talk out their hearts, - yet still,
Between the grace-notes of
The voice of love
From each to each
Trembles a rarer speech,
And with its presence every pause doth fill.

Unmoved it broods, this all-encompassing hush
Of one who stooping near,
No smallest sti...

Walter De La Mare

The Glimpse

Art thou asleep? or have thy wings
Wearied of my unchanging skies?
Or, haply, is it fading dreams
Are in my eyes?

Not even an echo in my heart
Tells me the courts thy feet trod last,
Bare as a leafless wood it is,
The summer past.

My inmost mind is like a book
The reader dulls with lassitude,
Wherein the same old lovely words
Sound poor and rude.

Yet through this vapid surface, I
Seem to see old-time deeps; I see,
Past the dark painting of the hour,
Life's ecstasy.

Only a moment; as when day
Is set, and in the shade of night,
Through all the clouds that compassed her,
Stoops into sight

Pale, changeless, everlasting Dian,
Gleams on the prone Endymion,
Troubles the dulness of his dreams:
And then i...

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 Remonstrance

I was at peace until you came
And set a careless mind aflame.
I lived in quiet; cold, content;
All longing in safe banishment,
Until your ghostly lips and eyes
Made wisdom unwise.

Naught was in me to tempt your feet
To seek a lodging. Quite forgot
Lay the sweet solitude we two
In childhood used to wander through;
Time's cold had closed my heart about;
And shut you out.

Well, and what then?... O vision grave,
Take all the little all I have!
Strip me of what in voiceless thought
Life's kept of life, unhoped, unsought! -
Reverie and dream that memory must
Hide deep in dust!

This only I say: - Though cold and bare
The haunted house you have chosen to share,
Still 'neath its walls the moonbeam goes
And trembles on the unte...

Walter De La Mare