The Moth

Isled in the midnight air,
Musked with the dark's faint bloom,
Out into glooming and secret haunts
    The flame cries, 'Come!'

Lovely in dye and fan,
A-tremble in shimmering grace,
A moth from her winter swoon
    Uplifts her face:

Stares from her glamorous eyes;
Wafts her on plumes like mist;
In ecstasy swirls and sways
    To her strange tryst.

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 Empty House

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Haunted

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

The Witch

Walter De La Mare, Simple Poetry

Mima

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 Tired Cupid

The thin moonlight with trickling ray,
Thridding the boughs of silver may,
Trembles in beauty, pale and cool,
On folded flower, and mantled pool.
All in a haze the rushes lean -
And he - he sits, with chin between
His two cold hands; his bare feet set
Deep in the grasses, green and wet.
About his head a hundred rings
Of gold loop down to meet his wings,
Whose feathers arched their stillness through
Gleam with slow-gathering drops of dew.
The mouse-bat peers; the stealthy vole
Creeps from the covert of its hole;
A shimmering moth its pinions furls,
Grey in the moonshine of his curls;
'Neath the faint stars the night-airs stray,
Scattering the fragrance of the may;
And with each stirring of the bough
Shadow beclouds his childlike brow.

Walter De La Mare

Sleeping Beauty

The scent of bramble fills the air,
    Amid her folded sheets she lies,
The gold of evening in her hair,
    The blue of morn shut in her eyes.

How many a changing moon hath lit
    The unchanging roses of her face!
Her mirror ever broods on it
    In silver stillness of the days.

Oft flits the moth on filmy wings
    Into his solitary lair;
Shrill evensong the cricket sings
    From some still shadow in her hair.

In heat, in snow, in wind, in flood,
    She sleeps in lovely loneliness,
Half-folded like an April bud
    On winter-haunted trees.

Walter De La Mare

The Sleeping Beauty

The scent of bramble sweets the air,
    Amid her folded sheets she lies,
The gold of evening in her hair,
    The blue of morn shut in her eyes.

How many a changing moon hath lit
    The unchanging roses of her face!
Her mirror ever broods on it
    In silver stillness of the days.

Oft flits the moth on filmy wings
    Into his solitary lair;
Shrill evensong the cricket sings
    From some still shadow in her hair.

In heat, in snow, in wind, in flood,
    She sleeps in lovely loneliness,
Half folded like an April bud
    On winter-haunted trees.

Walter De La Mare

Sephina

Black lacqueys at the wide-flung door
    Stand mute as men of wood.
Gleams like a pool the ballroom floor,
            A burnished solitude.
    A hundred waxen tapers shine
    From silver sconces; softly pine
    'Cello, fiddle, mandoline,
            To music deftly wooed,
And dancers in cambric, satin, silk,
With glancing hair and cheeks like milk,
            Wreathe, curtsey, intertwine.

The drowse of roses lulls the air
Wafted up the marble stair.
Like warbling water clucks the talk.
From room to room in splendour walk
Guests, smiling in the æry sheen;
Carmine and azure, white and green,
They stoop and languish, pace and preen
            Bare shoulder, painted fan,
Gemmed wrist and finger, neck of swan;
And still the pluckt s...

Walter De La Mare

The Moth-Signal

(On Egdon Heath)



"What are you still, still thinking,"
    He asked in vague surmise,
"That stare at the wick unblinking
    With those great lost luminous eyes?"

"O, I see a poor moth burning
    In the candle-flame," said she,
Its wings and legs are turning
    To a cinder rapidly."

"Moths fly in from the heather,"
    He said, "now the days decline."
"I know," said she. "The weather,
    I hope, will at last be fine.

"I think," she added lightly,
    "I'll look out at the door.
The ring the moon wears nightly
    May be visible now no more."

She rose, and, little heeding,
    Her husband then went on
With his attentive reading
    In the annals of ages gone.

Outside the house a figure<...

Thomas Hardy

The Fairy In Winter

There was a Fairy - flake of winter -
Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence,
Sister crystal to crystal sighing,
Making of meadow argent palace,
    Night a star-sown solitude,
Cried 'neath her frozen eaves, "I burn here!"

Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like,
Wand within fingers, locks enspangled,
Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,
She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow -
Green as stalks of weeds in water -
Breathed: stirred.

Rilled from her heart the ichor, coursing,
Flamed and awoke her slumbering magic.
Softlier than moth's her pinions trembled;
Out into blackness, light-like, she flittered,
Leaving her hollow cold, forsaken.

In air, o'er crystal, rang twangling night-wind.
Bare, rimed pine-woods murmured lament.

Walter De La Mare