Walter De la Mare

“ Yet still the Pedlar his old burden sings, —
"What, pretty sweetheart, shall I show to you?
Here's orange ribands, here's a string of pearls,
Here's silk of buttercup and pansy glove,
A pin of tortoiseshell for windy curls,
A box of silver, scented sweet with clove:
Come now," he says, with dim and lifted face,
"I pass not often such a lonely place."
"Pluck not a hair!" a hidden rabbit cried,
"With but one hair he'll steal thy heart away,
Then only sorrow shall thy lattice hide:
Go in! all honest pedlars come by day." ”

“ It's the one rag of philosophy age denies no one. It is so easy to be heroic—debonair, iron-grey, fluent, dramatic—you know it's captivation, perhaps? But after all, life's comedy, when one stops smiling, is only the tepidest farce. Or the gilt wears off and the pinchbeck tragedy shows through. And so, as I say, we talk on, being past feeling. One by one our hopes come home to roost, our delusions find themselves out, and the mystery proves to be nothing but sleight-of-hand. It's age, my dear Jane—age; it turns one to stone. ”

“ The gun, the gun! The Oomgar might wake. Let me creep swiftly to my stone, and bring the glass to me there."
"The Oomgar will not wake," said Nod; "he sleeps as deep as the Ghost of the Rose upon the bosom of Tishnar."
"But, O Mulgar, think again. Strip off from my body this grievous belt," she pleaded; "you will keep nothing for yourself."
"Have no fear, friend," said Nod shakily; "I will keep"—and his eyes met hers in the shadow of the hat, stony and merciless and ravenous—"I will keep," he grunted, "my Zbaffle."
He went into the hut and seated himself on a little stool. ”

“ You may imagine, then, I push the bolts home."
"But why, Jane—why?" cried Mr. Rochester incredulously. "Violent fancies, child!"
"Why, sir, it was, I say, not the sea I heard, but a trickling tide one icy tap might stay, if it found but entry there."
"You talk wildly, Jane—wildly, wildly; the air's afloat with listeners; so it seems, so it seems. Had I but one clear lamp in this dark face!"
We sat down in the candle-lit twilight to supper. It was to me like the supper of a child, taken at peace in the clear beams, ere he descend into the shadow of sleep. ”

“ Because of his very candour, because, so to speak, of what he looked like, this was to some extent true of Rupert Brooke. Age, in time, scrawls our very selves upon our faces. Fast-locked the door of our souls may be, but the key hangs in the porch. But youth and delightful manners may be a mask concealing gravity and deep feeling. And what is one's remembrance of that serenely eager, questing face, stilled, as it were, with the phantom of a smile that might have lingered in the countenance of the Sphinx in her younger days, but that of the very embodiment of youth? ”

“ 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 untended rose;
Still o'er its broken roof-tree rise
The starry arches of the skies ”

“ There was, it seemed, a peculiar aura in Lawford’s presence, a shadow of a something in his demeanour that proved him alien.
None the less green Widderstone kept calling him, much as a bell in the imagination tolls on and on, the echo of reality. If the worst should come to the worst, why—there is pasture in the solitary by-ways for the beast that strays. He quickened his pace along lonelier streets, and soon strode freely through the little flagged and cobbled village of shops, past the same small jutting window whose clock had told him the hour on that first dark hurried night. ”

“ It seemed 'twas diamonds in the air, or little flakes of frost;
It seemed 'twas golden smoke around, or sunbeams lightly tost;
It seemed an elfin music like to reeds and warblers rose:
'Nay!' Lucy said, 'it is the wind that through the branches flows.'
And as she peeps, and as she peeps, 'tis no more one, but three,
And eye of bat, and downy wing of owl within the tree,
And the bells of that sweet belfry a-pealing as before,
And now it is not three she sees, and now it is not four. ”

“ Grass, crystalled with hoar-frost, muffled his footsteps. What had he meant by that? repeated self to self, but not as if expectant of an answer.
When well out of sight of the cabman and his vehicle beneath the slope of the hill, the fruit merchant paused and lifted his eyes. League beyond league beneath him, as if to the confines of the world, the country-side spread on, frost-beclad meadow, wood and winding lane. And one sole house in sight, a small, tumbledown, lightless, huddling cottage, its ragged thatch and walls checkered black with shadow and dazzling white with wash of moonshine. ”

“ O riddle of life that is
An endless war 'twixt contrarieties.
Leave this vain questioning. Is not sweet the rose?
Sings not the wild bird ere to rest he goes?
Hath not in miracle brave June returned?
Burns not her beauty as of old it burned?
O foolish one to roam
So far in thine own mind away from home!
Where blooms the flower when her petals fade,
Where sleepeth echo by earth's music made,
Where all things transient to the changeless win,
There waits the peace thy spirit dwelleth in.
VIGIL
Dark is the night,
The fire burns faint and low,
Hours—days—years,
Into grey ashes go ”

“ And vain sweet pleasures that on earth may be,
Seal up your ears, sing some old happy song,
Confuse his magic who is all mockery:
His sweets are death." Yet, still how she doth long
But just to taste, then shut the lattice tight,
And hide her eyes from the delicious sight!
"What must I pay?" she whispered. "Pay!" says he,
"Pedlar I am who through this wood to roam,
One lock of her hair is gold enough for me,
For apple, peach, comfit, or honeycomb!"
But from her bough a drowsy squirrel cried,
"Trust him not, Lettice, trust, oh trust him not!" ”

“ The grass was hoar with a moonlight almost as white as snow. The years seemed to melt away like a dream, and, as I turned, seeing her there still waiting, I realised that she herself must have devised this echo of our first and only other meeting. The strange rapt face looked curiously unreal. With queer contrary thoughts in my mind, I gazed across at her, not more trustful of my eyes perhaps in that uncertain light than I had been of my ears earlier in the evening. She did not stir. All perfectly still things seem to have a look of agelessness and of the eternal. ”

“ The moment we begin to live—when we meet the friend of friends, or fall in love, or think of our children, or make up our minds, or set to the work we burn to do, or make something, or vow a vow, or pause suddenly face to face with beauty—at that moment the imagination in us kindles, begins to flame. Then we actually talk in rhythm. What is genius but the possession of this supreme inward energy in a rare and intense degree? Illumined by the imagination, our life—whatever its defeats and despairs—is a never-ending, unforeseen strangeness and adventure and mystery. ”

“ Traitor to life, of life betrayed:
O, of thy mercy deep,
A dream my all, the all I ask
Is sleep.
MOTLEY Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee;
And thou, poor Innocency;
And love—a Lad with broken wing;
And Pity, too:
The Fool shall sing to you,
As Fools will sing.
Ay, music hath small sense,
And a tune's soon told,
And Earth is old,
And my poor wits are dense;
Yet have I secrets,—dark, my dear,
To breathe you all: Come near. ”

“ Criseyde folded her hands and leaned her cheek sidelong upon the stone.
"For what?" I repeated.
"For what but idle questions?" she said; "for a traveller's vanity that deems looking love-boys into a woman's eyes her sweeter entertainment than all the heroes of Troy. Oh, for a house of nought to be at peace in! Oh, gooseish swan! Oh, brittle vows! Tell me, Voyager, is it not so?—that men are merely angry boys with beards; and women—repeat not, ye who know! Never yet set I these steadfast eyes on a man that would not steal the moon for taper—would she but come down." ”

“ There is, too, a faint wind that breathes in the first twilight and starshine of Munza called the Wind of Tishnar. It was, I think, the faint murmur of this wind that echoed in the ear of Mutta-matutta as she lay dying, for in dying one hears, it is said, what in life would carry no more tidings to the mind than light brings to the hand. Nod's bells that he heard, and thought were his father's, must have been the Zevveras' bells of Tishnar's Water-middens, all wandering Meermuts. These Water-middens, or Water-maidens, are like the beauty of the moonlight. ”

“ But here I am; and not nearly so ill as I look, Alice; and there’s nothing more to trouble ourselves about; not even if it should be necessary for me to go away for a time. And this is our secret, mind; ours only; just a dead secret between you and me.’
They sat for awhile without speaking or stirring. And faintly along the hushed road Lawford heard in the silence a leisurely indolent beat of little hoofs approaching, and the sound of wheels. A sudden wave of feeling swept over him. He took Alice’s quiet loving face in his hands and kissed her passionately. ”

“ Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve's nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.
WHEN THE ROSE IS FADED When the rose is faded,
Memory may still dwell on
Her beauty shadowed,
And the sweet smell gone.
That vanishing loveliness,
That burdening breath
No bond of life hath then
Nor grief of death.
'Tis the immortal thought
Whose passion still
Makes of the changing
The unchangeable.
Oh, thus thy beauty,
Loveliest on earth to me,
Dark with no sorrow, shines
And burns, with Thee. ”

“ Laugh, laugh, little Jinnie, again—gain—gain,
Laugh, laugh, little Jinnie, again."
Ah me! what a strange, what a gladsome duet
From a house in the deeps of a wood!
Such shrill and such harsh voices never met yet
A-laughing as loud as they could, could, could,
A-laughing as loud as they could.
Come Jinnie, come dwarf, cocksparrow, and bee,
There's a ring gaudy-green in the dell,
Sing, sing, ye sweet cherubs, that flit in the tree;
La! who can draw tears from a well, well, well,
Who ever drew tears from a well! ”

“ Between their dream and their reality looms no impassable abyss. There is no solitude more secluded than a child's, no absorption more complete, no insight more exquisite and, one might even add, more comprehensive. As we strive to look back and to live our past again, can we recall any joy, fear, hope or disappointment more extreme than those of our childhood, any love more impulsive and unquestioning, and, alas, any boredom so unmitigated and unutterable?
We call their faith, even in ourselves, credulity; and are grown perhaps so accustomed to life's mysteries that we pale at their candour. ”

“ And, as if he had overheard my thoughts, Reverie turned at the cross-ways.
"You will come back again," he said. "They tell me in distant lands men worship Time, set up a shrine to him in every street, and treasure his emblem next their hearts. There, they say, even the lover babbles of hours, and the dreamer measures sleep with a pendulum. Well, my house is secluded, and the world is far; and to me Time is naught. Return, sir, then, when it pleases you. Besides," he added, smiling faintly, "there is always company at the World's End." ”

“ I and my brothers," said Nod. "We light fires because we are cold and hungry. We are wanderers; that is true. But 'wild'—I know not."
"'Cold,' O Mulgar, and with a jacket of sheep's wool, thick and curled, like that?"
Nod laughed. "It was a pleasant coat when it was new, Midden, but we are old friends now—it and me. And though it keeps me warm enough marching by day, when night comes, and this never-to-be-forgotten frost sharpens, my bones begin to ache, as did my mother's before me, whose grave not even Kush can see." ”

“ I don’t care that, vicar, honestly—puffed up with spiritual pride. If a man can’t sleep with pride for a bed-fellow, well, he’d better try elsewhere. It’s no good; I’m as stubborn as a mule; that’s at least a relic of the old Adam. I care no more,’ he raised his voice firmly and gravely—‘I don’t care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catacombs!’
Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. ‘Not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catechisms!’ he muttered. ”

“ These childish listeners, the straggling briers, the impenetrable thickets, the emerald gloaming, the marble stillness of the lofty lichenous tower: I took courage. Could such things be in else than Elfland? And she who out of beauty and being vanishes and eludes, what else could she be than one of Elfland's denizens from whom a light and credulous heart need fear nothing.
I trod like a shadow where the phantom had stood and opened the unused door. I was about to pass into the deeper gloom of the house when a hound appeared and stood regarding me with shining eyes in the faint gloaming. ”

“ Nothing pleases him so much as doing things, though, fretted that body and mind so soon weary, he may pine for sleep. His writing, whether in his poems, his "Webster," or in his letters, is itself a kind of action; and he delights far more than the mystics in things touched, smelt and tasted. He delights, that is, in things in themselves not merely for their beauty or for the unseen reality they represent. He is restless, enquiring, veers in the wind like a golden weathercock. He is impatient of a vague idealism, as wary as a fox of the faintest sniff of sentimentality. ”

“ So beautiful is she that a Mulgar who dreams even of one of her Maidens, and wakes still in the presence of his dream, can no longer be happy in the company of his kind. He hides himself away in some old hole or rocky fastness, lightless, matted, and uncombed, and so thins and pines, or becomes a Wanderer or Môh-mulgar. But it is rare for this to be, for very few Mulgars dream beyond the mere forest, as it were; and fewer still keep the memories of their dreams when the livelong vision of Munza returns to their waking eyes. ”

“ And then Life's book put by;
Turn each to each
In all simplicity:
Ere the last flame is gone
To warm us by.
THE OLD MEN Old and alone, sit we,
Caged, riddle-rid men;
Lost to Earth's "Listen!" and "See!"
Thought's "Wherefore?" and "When?"
Only far memories stray
Of a past once lovely, but now
Wasted and faded away,
Like green leaves from the bough.
Vast broods the silence of night,
The ruinous moon
Lifts on our faces her light,
Whence all dreaming is gone.
We speak not; trembles each head;
In their sockets our eyes are still;
Desire as cold as the dead ”

“ He bent forward a little, and stood motionless and drawn up, the pupils of his eyes slowly contracting and expanding as he gazed down into the carpeted vacant gloom; past the dim louring presence that had fallen back before him.
His mouth opened. ‘Who’s there?’ at last he called.
‘Thank God, thank God!’ he heard Mr Bethany mutter. ‘I mustn’t call, Lawford,’ came a hurried whisper as if the old gentleman were pressing his lips to speak through the letter-box. ‘Come down and open the door; there’s a good fellow! I’ve been knocking no end of a time.’
‘Yes, I am coming,’ said Lawford. ”

“ Her dark eyes seem
Dark with a beautiful
Distant dream;
And still she plays,
Sings tenderly
To him of hope,
And of memory.
ALONE A very old woman
Lives in yon house.
The squeak of the cricket,
The stir of the mouse,
Are all she knows
Of the earth and us.
Once she was young,
Would dance and play,
Like many another
Young popinjay;
And run to her mother
At dusk of day.
And colours bright
She delighted in;
The fiddle to hear,
And to lift her chin,
And sing as small
As a twittering wren.
But age apace
Comes at last to all;
And a lone house filled
With the cricket's call ”

“ Chance has given you back eyes to see, a heart that can be broken. Chance and the stirrings of a long-gone life have torn down the veil age spins so thick and fast. Pride and ambition; what dull fools men are! Effort and duty, what dull fools men are!’ He listened on and on to these phantom pleadings and to the rather coarse old Lawford conscience grunting them mercilessly down, too weary even to try to rest. ”

“ Above all, Brooke's poems are charged with, and surrender the magic of what we call personality. They seem, as we read them, to bring us into a happy, instant relationship with him, not only ghostly eye to eye, but mind to mind. They tell more than even friendship could discover unaided. They share his secrets with the world—as if a boy had turned out the contents of his astonishing pockets just before going to bed. They share them, too, in that queer paradoxical fashion which makes a volume of poems a more secure refuge even than one's lawyer, one's doctor, or a priest. ”

“ They stand for the most part about three spans high in their grass slippers. Their noses are even flatter than the noses of the Mullabruks. Their teeth stand out somewhat, giving their small faces a cunning mouse-look, which never changes. Their eyes are round and thin-lidded, and almost as colourless as glass. Yet behind their glassiness seems to be set a gleam, like a far and tiny taper shining, so that they are perfectly visible in the dark, or even dusk. Thus may they be seen, a horde of them together in the evening gloom of the forest when they go Mulgar-hunting. ”

“ Some self-command; my dear good fellow, remember, remember it’s only the will, the will that keeps us breathing.’
Lawford peered as if out of a gathering dusk, that thickened and flickered with shadows before his eyes. ‘What’s he mean, then,’ he muttered huskily, ‘coming here with his black, still carcase—peeping, peeping—what’s he mean, I say?’ There was a moment’s silence. Then with lifted brows and wide eyes that to every one of his three witnesses left an indelible memory of clear and wolfish light within their glassy pupils, he turned heavily, and climbed back to his solitude. ”

“ Princes of Tishnar have no tongue for blood."
Immanâla crouched low, with jutting head. "Who is this Prince of Tishnar that, having no tongue for blood, roasts meat with fire for an Oomgar, the enemy of us all?"
"I, Nameless, am Nod," said he softly. "But meat dead is dead meat. What against me is it if this blind Oomgar hungers for scorched bones? It is a riddle, Immanâla. Come with me now, then; let us palaver with him together." ”

“ But Lawford, quite unmindful of the shock, continued in a kind of heedless reverie to watch, as he combed, the still visionary thoughts that passed in tranced stillness before his eyes. He longed beyond measure for freedom that until yesterday he had not even dreamed existed outside the covers of some old impossible romance—the magic of the darkening sky, the invisible flocking presences of the dead, the shock of imaginations that had no words, of quixotic emotions which the stranger had stirred in that low, mocking, furtive talk beside the broken stones of the Huguenot. ”

“ He dreamed a hundred dreams, rocked softly on the sliding raft, all of burning sunshine, or wild white moonlight, or of icy and dazzling Witzaweelwūlla; but the Water-midden's beauty haunted all.
He woke into almost pitch-black gloom, and, starting up, could count only four torches staining the unrippling water with their flare. And, being very thirsty, he stooped over with hollowed hand, as if to drink.
"No, no," said Thumb drowsily; "not drink, Nod. Sleepy water—sleepy water. Moona-mulgars there, drunk and drunk; thirstier and thirstier, torches out—all dead asleep—all dead asleep." ”

“ What was there in the stillness of its beautiful splendour that seemed to sharpen his horror and difficulty, and yet to stir him to such a daring and devilry as he had never known since he was a boy? There was little sound of life; somewhere an unknown bird was singing, and a few late bees were droning in the bracken. All these years he had, like an old blind horse, stolidly plodded round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now, just when the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. ”

“ No pale and tapering light hovered clearly beaming now beneath these cold and starlit branches. The Mounds of the Minimuls were awake and astir. Soon the furious little Flesh-eaters would come pouring up in their hundreds, and to-morrow, their magic gone, all three brothers would be quickly frizzling, with these same Gelica-nuts for seasoning, on the spit.
Nod flung himself down; down, too, went Thumb and Thimble in the ice-bespangled snow. At last they found the stone, shining like a pale moon amid the twinkling starriness of the frost. ”

“ Herbert lifted his glass as if to his visitor’s acumen and set it down again without tasting it. ‘Why, my dear fellow,’ he said triumphantly, ‘even a dream must have a peg. Yours was this unforgettable old suicide. Candidly now, how much of Sabathier was actually yours? In spite of all that that fantastical fellow, Herbert, said last night, dead men don’t tell tales. The last place in the world to look for a ghost is where his traitorous bones lie crumbling. Good heavens, think what irrefutable masses of evidence there would be at our finger-tips if every tombstone hid its ghost! ”

“ Thumb started up out of his sleep, and in an instant the two brothers were up and at each other, wrestling and kicking, gnashing their teeth, and guzzling through their throats and noses like mere Gungas, Mullabruks, or Manquabees. Poor Nod, not knowing what was the cause of all the trouble, got a much worse drubbing than either, till at last, in their furious struggling, all three brothers rolled from under the wattles into the pale glimmering of the stars and snow. For in this valley after the sun goes moves a phantom light or phosphorescence over the snow. ”

“ Oh, believe me; no one is near; we go on; and see! it gradually, gradually lightens. How thankful I am I came.’
She had turned and they were steadily ascending as if pushing their way, battling on through some obstacle of the mind rather than of the senses beneath the star-powdered callous vault of night. And it seemed to Lawford as if, as they pressed on together, some obscure detestable presence as slowly, as doggedly had drawn worsted aside. He could see again the peaceful outspread branches of the trees, the lych-gate standing in clear-cut silhouette against the liquid dusk of the sky. ”

“ Every day, every night, Nod has talked in his quiet with you."
"We do not understand the little Oomgar," said Thimble angrily. "Who are you, the youngest of us all, to lie and make cunning against the people of the forest? Let your master, the blood-spilling Oomgar, shoot us, too. What are we in such a heap of bones? We have no fear of him. On all fours, back, parakeet; tell him where the Mulgars' hearts lie hid. Maybe he'll fling his Nizza-neela a bone."
"O Thimble, Mulla-mulgar, why do you seek out all the black words for me? Haven't I done all for the best? ”