The Horseman

I heard a horseman
    Ride over the hill;
The moon shone clear,
The night was still;
His helm was silver,
    And pale was he;
And the horse he rode
    Was of ivory.

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 Rainbow

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Dream-Song

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

I Saw Three Witches

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Song

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.

The Huntsmen

Three jolly gentlemen,
    In coats of red,
Rode their horses
    Up to bed.

Three jolly gentlemen
    Snored till morn,
Their horses champing
    The golden corn.

Three jolly gentlemen,
    At break of day,
Came clitter-clatter down the stairs
And galloped away.

Walter De La Mare

The Horn

Hark! is that a horn I hear,
    In cloudland winding sweet -
And bell-like clash of bridle-rein,
    And silver-shod light feet?

Is it the elfin laughter
    Of fairies riding faint and high,
Beneath the branches of the moon,
    Straying through the starry sky?

Is it in the globèd dew
    Such sweet melodies may fall?
Wood and valley - all are still,
    Hushed the shepherd's call.

Walter De La Mare

The Listeners

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Tr...

Walter De La Mare

The Hare

In the black furrow of a field
    I saw an old witch-hare this night;
And she cocked a lissome ear,
    And she eyed the moon so bright,
And she nibbled of the green;
    And I whispered "Wh-s-st! witch-hare,"
Away like a ghostie o'er the field
    She fled, and left the moonlight there.

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

The Portrait Of A Warrior

His brow is seamed with line and scar;
    His cheek is red and dark as wine;
The fires as of a Northern star
    Beneath his cap of sable shine.

His right hand, bared of leathern glove,
    Hangs open like an iron gin,
You stoop to see his pulses move,
    To hear the blood sweep out and in.

He looks some king, so solitary
    In earnest thought he seems to stand,
As if across a lonely sea
    He gazed impatient of the land.

Out of the noisy centuries
    The foolish and the fearful fade;
Yet burn unquenched these warrior eyes,
    Time hath not dimmed nor death dismayed.

Walter De La Mare