Walter De La Mare

"I'm thinking and thinking," said old Sam Shore,
"'Twere somebody knocking I heard at the door."

From the clock popped the cuckoo and cuckooed out eight,
As there in his chair he wondering sate ...
"There's no one I knows on would come so late,
A-clicking the latch of an empty house
With nobbut inside 'un but me and a mouse....
Maybe a-waking in sleep I be,
And 'twere out of a dream came that tapping to me."
At length he cautiously rose, and went,
And with thumb upon latch awhile listening bent,
Then slowly drew open the door. And behold!
There stood a Fairy! - all green and gold,
Mantled up warm against dark and cold,
And smiling up into his candle shine,
Lips like wax, and cheeks like wine,
As saucy and winsome a thing to see
As are linden ...

TO R.I.


My heart faints in me for the distant sea.
The roar of London is the roar of ire
The lion utters in his old desire
For Libya out of dim captivity.
The long bright silver of Cheapside I see,
Her gilded weathercocks on roof and spire
Exulting eastward in the western fire;
All things recall one heart-sick memory: -

Ever the rustle of the advancing foam,
The surges' desolate thunder, and the cry
As of some lone babe in the whispering sky;
Ever I peer into the restless gloom
To where a ship clad dim and loftily
Looms steadfast in the wonder of her home.

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...

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...

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon:
This way, and that, she peers and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.

Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense;
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to impotence.

The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see:
Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
They slumber in secrecy.

Two worlds they have - a globe forgot
Wheeling from dark to light;
And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.

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.

As I lay awake in the white moonlight
I heard a faint singing in the wood,
            "Out of bed,
            Sleepyhead,
            Put your white foot, now;
            Here are we
            Beneath the tree
            Singing round the root now."

I looked out of window, in the white moonlight,
The leaves were like snow in the wood -
            "Come away,
            Child, and play
            Light with the gnomies;
            In a mound,
            Green and round,
            That's where their home is.

            "Honey sweet,
            Curds to eat,
            Cream and frumenty,
            Shells and beads,
            Poppy seeds,
            You shall have plenty."

But, as soon as I stoo...

No breath of wind,
No gleam of sun -
Still the white snow
Swirls softly down -
Twig and bough
And blade and thorn
All in an icy
Quiet, forlorn.
Whispering, nestling,
Through the air,
On sill and stone,
Roof - everywhere,
It heaps its powdery
Crystal flakes,
Of every tree
A mountain makes:
Till pale and faint
At shut of day,
Stoops from the West
One wintry ray.
Then, feathered in fire,
Where ghosts the moon,
A robin shrills
His lonely tune;
And from her dark-gnarled
Yew-tree lair
Flits she who had been
In hiding there.

Some one came knocking
    At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,
    I'm sure - sure - sure;
I listened, I opened,
    I looked to left and right,
But nought there was a-stirring
    In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
    Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
    The screech-owl's call,
Only the cricket whistling
    While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
    At all, at all, at all.

Some one came knocking
    At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,
    I'm sure - sure - sure;
I listened, I opened,
    I looked to left and right,
But naught there was a-stirring
    In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
    Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
    The screech-owl's call,
Only the cricket whistling
    While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.

O for a moon to light me home!
    O for a lanthorn green!
For those sweet stars the Pleiades,
That glitter in the twilight trees;
    O for a lovelorn taper! O
    For a lanthorn green!

O for a frock of tartan!
    O for clear, wild, grey eyes!
For fingers light as violets,
'Neath branches that the blackbird frets;
    O for a thistly meadow! O
    For clear, wild grey eyes!

O for a heart like almond boughs!
    O for sweet thoughts like rain!
O for first-love like fields of grey,
Shut April-buds at break of day!
    O for a sleep like music!
    For still dreams like rain!

A Song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green - green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wildwood tree.

Widdershins turned I, singing it low,
Watching the wild birds come and go;
No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen
Under the thick-thatched branches green.

Twilight came; silence came;
The planet of Evening's silver flame;
By darkening paths I wandered through
Thickets trembling with drops of dew.

But the music is lost and the words are gone
Of the song I sang as I sat alone,
Ages and ages have fallen on me -
On the wood and the pool and the elder tree.

Black as a chimney is his face,
    And ivory white his teeth,
And in his brass-bound cart he rides,
    The chestnut blooms beneath.

'Sooeep, Sooeep!' he cries, and brightly peers
    This way and that, to see
With his two light-blue shining eyes
    What custom there may be.

And once inside the house, he'll squat,
    And drive his rods on high,
Till twirls his sudden sooty brush
    Against the morning sky.

Then, 'mid his bulging bags of soot,
    With half the world asleep,
His small cart wheels him off again,
    Still hoarsely bawling, 'Sooeep!'

"What voice is that I hear
Crying across the pool?"
"It is the voice of Pan you hear,
Crying his sorceries shrill and clear,
In the twilight dim and cool."

"What song is it he sings,
Echoing from afar;
While the sweet swallow bends her wings,
Filling the air with twitterings,
Beneath the brightening star?"

The woodman answered me,
His faggot on his back: -
"Seek not the face of Pan to see;
Flee from his clear note summoning thee
To darkness deep and black!"

"He dwells in thickest shade,
Piping his notes forlorn
Of sorrow never to be allayed;
Turn from his coverts sad
Of twilight unto morn!"

The woodman passed away
Along the forest path;
His ax shone keen and grey
In the last beams of day:
And all ...

(To EDWARD THOMAS)


The haze of noon wanned silver-grey,
The soundless mansion of the sun;
The air made visible in his ray,
Like molten glass from furnace run,
Quivered o'er heat-baked turf and stone
And the flower of the gorse burned on,
Burned softly as gold of a child's fair hair
Along each spiky spray, and shed
Almond-like incense in the air
Whereon our senses fed.

At foot, a few sparse harebells: blue
And still as were the friend's dark eyes
That dwelt on mine, transfixèd through
With sudden ecstatic surmise.

'Hst!' he cried softly, smiling, and lo,
Stealing amidst that maze gold-green,
I heard a whispering music flow
From guileful throat of bird, unseen:
So delicate, the straining ear
Scarce carried its faint sy...

Once when my life was young,
I, too, with Spring's bright face
By mine, walked softly along,
Pace to his pace.

Then burned his crimson may,
Like a clear flame outspread,
Arching our happy way:
Then would he shed

Strangely from his wild face
Wonderful light on me -
Like hounds that keen in chase
Their quarry see.

Oh, sorrow now to know
What shafts, what keenness cold
His are to pierce me through,
Now that I'm old.

The sandy cat by the Farmer's chair
Mews at his knee for dainty fare;
Old Rover in his moss-greened house
Mumbles a bone, and barks at a mouse
In the dewy fields the cattle lie
Chewing the cud 'neath a fading sky
Dobbin at manger pulls his hay:
Gone is another summer's day.