Walter De la Mare

“ Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand
Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned,
Spake so thy spirit speech should understand,
And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal
Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways
Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal,
Like dawn distraught upon unhappy days,
To prove nought, nothing? Was it Time's large voice
Out of the inscrutable future whispered so?
Or but the horror of a little noise
Earth wakes at dead of night? Or does Love know
When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even
In sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse? ”

“ LIFE Hearken, O dear, now strikes the hour we die;
We, who in our strange kiss
Have proved a dream the world's realities,
Turned each from other's darkness with a sigh,
Need heed no more of life, waste no more breath
On any other journey, but of death.
And yet: Oh, know we well
How each of us must prove Love's infidel;
Still out of ecstasy turn trembling back
To earth's same empty track
Of leaden day by day, and hour by hour, and be
Of all things lovely the cold mortuary. ”

“ Her tongue claps ever like a ram's sweet bell;
There's not a name but calls a tale to mind—
Some marrowy patty of farce or melodram;
There's not a soldier but hath babes in view;
There's not on earth what minds not of the midwife:
"O, widowhood that left me still espoused!"
Beauty she sighs o'er, and she sighs o'er gold;
Gold will buy all things, even a sweet husband,
Else only Heaven is left and—farewell youth! ”

“ Are your eyes to me.
But words are shallow, and soon
Dreams fade that the heart once knew;
And youth fades out in the mind,
In the dark eyes too.
What can a tired heart say,
Which the wise of the world have made dumb?
Save to the lonely dreams of a child,
"Return again, come!"
FAITHLESS The words you said grow faint;
The lamps you lit burn dim;
Yet, still be near your faithless friend
To urge and counsel him.
Still with returning feet
To where life's shadows brood,
With steadfast eyes made clear in death
Haunt his vague solitude. ”

“ 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. ”

“ God knows I could not rest for one I still was thinking of;
Like a rose sheathed in beauty her spirit was to me;
Now out of unforgottenness a bitter draught I'm drinking of,
'Tis sad of such beauty unremembered to be.
Men all all shades, O Woman.—Winds wist not of the way they blow.
Apart from your kindness, life's at best but a snare. ”

“ Wings in this mansion of life are coming and going,
Voices of unseen loveliness carol and sing.
Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are swaying,
Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove
Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obeying,
Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love.
Oh, now begone sullen care—this light is my seeing;
I am the palace, and mine are its windows and walls;
Daybreak is come, and life from the darkness of being
Springs, like a child from the womb, when the lonely one calls. ”

“ Yet neither could expound.
And we—who sing but as we can,
In the small knowledge of a man—
Have we an answer found?
Nay, some are happy whose delight
Is hid even from themselves from sight;
And some win peace who spend
The skill of words to sweeten despair
Of finding consolation where
Life has but one dark end;
Who, in rapt solitude, tell o'er
A tale as lovely as forlore,
Into the midnight air. ”

“ Each arch and prominence and hollow place
That shall revealed be when all else is gone—
Warmth, colour, roundness—to oblivion,
And nothing left but darkness and disgrace.
Life like a moment passed seemed then to be;
A transient dream this raiment that it wore;
While spelled my hand out its mortality
Made certain all that had seemed doubt before:
Proved—O how vaguely, yet how lucidly!—
How much death does; and yet can do no more. ”

“ Thou Solitary, stir in thy still sleep;
All the night waits thee, yet thou still dream'st on.
Furtive the shadows that about thee creep,
And cheat the shining footsteps of the moon:
Unseal thine eyes, it is my heart that sings,
And beats in vain its wings.
Lost in heaven's vague, the stars burn softly through
The world's dark latticings, we prisoned stray
Within its lovely labyrinth, and know
Mute seraphs guard the way
Even from silence unto speech, from love
To that self's self it still is dreaming of. ”

“ Blue wells a-twinkle, arch and lewd and pious—
To darken all sudden into Stygian gloom,
And paint disaster with uplifted whites,
Is life's epitome. She prates and prates—
A waterbrook of words o'er twelve small pebbles.
And when she dies—some grey, long, summer evening,
When the bird shouts of childhood through the dusk,
'Neath night's faint tapers—then her body shall
Lie stiff with silks of sixty thrifty years. ”

“ Not life enough I heaped, so thus my heart must fare with her,
Now wrapt in the gross clay, bereft of life's breath.
MUSIC When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees,
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.
When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. ”

“ 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 ”

“ With birds that flitted feathered in the dappling,
The jewel-bright leaves between.
And he lifted up his face towards her lattice,
And there, alluring-wise,
Slanting through the silence of the long past,
Dwelt the still green Witch's eyes.
And vaguely from the hiding-place of memory
Voices seemed to cry;
"What is the darkness of one brief life-time
To the deaths thou hast made us die?
"Heed not the words of the Enchantress
Who would us still betray!" ”

“ O what an arch of light now spans
These fields by night no longer Man's!
Their ancient Master is abroad,
Walking beneath the moonlight cold:
His presence is the stillness, He
Fills earth with wonder and mystery.
NIGHT All from the light of the sweet moon
Tired men lie now abed;
Actionless, full of visions, soon
Vanishing, soon sped.
The starry night aflock with beams
Of crystal light scarce stirs:
Only its birds—the cocks, the streams,
Call 'neath heaven's wanderers.
All silent; all hearts still ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ Would be my eyes in their bright beam;
Awake, we know 'tis not a dream;
Asleep, some devil in the mind
Might truest thoughts with false enwind.
Life is a mockery if death
Have the least power men say it hath. ”

“ On eager wings, from song to silence,
To its darkened nest alone?
Who takes for brightening eyes the stars,
For locks the still moonbeam,
Sighs through the dews of evening peacefully
Falling, "Dream!"?
THULE If thou art sweet as they are sad
Who on the shores of Time's salt sea
Watch on the dim horizon fade
Ships bearing love to night and thee;
If past all beacons Hope hath lit
In the dark wanderings of the deep
They who unwilling traverse it
Dream not till dawn unseal their sleep ”

“ Know that my heart forgives—
Ere yet, grown cold in peace,
It loves not, nor grieves.
DUST TO DUST Heavenly Archer, bend thy bow;
Now the flame of life burns low,
Youth is gone; I, too, would go.
Even Fortune leads to this:
Harsh or kind, at last she is
Murderess of all ecstasies.
Yet the spirit, dark, alone,
Bound in sense, still hearkens on
For tidings of a bliss foregone.
Sleep is well for dreamless head,
At no breath astonishèd,
From the Gardens of the Dead. ”

“ From these rapt eyes,
Ere the first dart of daybreak
Pierce the skies.
VAIN QUESTIONING What needest thou?—a few brief hours of rest
Wherein to seek thyself in thine own breast;
A transient silence wherein truth could say
Such was thy constant hope, and this thy way?—
O burden of life that is
A livelong tangle of perplexities!
What seekest thou?—a truce from that thou art;
Some steadfast refuge from a fickle heart;
Still to be thou, and yet no thing of scorn,
To find no stay here, and yet not forlorn?—
O riddle of life that is
An endless war 'twixt contrarieties. ”

“ Hunched cold in ruffled wings,
Its snowy nest forsook,
Caws of unnumbered Springs.
NOON AND NIGHT FLOWER Not any flower that blows
But shining watch doth keep;
Every swift changing chequered hour it knows
Now to break forth in beauty; now to sleep. ”

“ But none too gladsome to wake and grow cold where life's shadows pass.
Dumb the old Toll-Woman squats,
And, for every green copper battered and worn, doles out Nevers and Nots.
I know a Blind Man, too,
Who with a sharp ear listens and listens the whole world through. ”

“ Hate cannot bitter them, nor wrath deny;
Else were this Desdemona.... Why!
Woman a harlot is, and life a nest
Fouled by long ages of forked fools. And God—
Iago deals not with a tale so dull:
To have made the world! Fie on thee, Artisan! ”

“ What exquisite greenness sprouts from these to grace
The moving fields of summer; on the brink
Of archèd waves the sea-horizon trace,
Whence wheels night's galaxy; and in silence sink
The pride in rapture of life's dwelling-place!"
HUMANITY "Ever exulting in thyself, on fire
To flaunt the purple of the Universe,
To strut and strut, and thy great part rehearse;
Ever the slave of every proud desire ”

“ 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.
THE MARKET-PLACE My mind is like a clamorous market-place.
All day in wind, rain, sun, its babel wells;
Voice answering to voice in tumult swells.
Chaffering and laughing, pushing for a place,
My thoughts haste on, gay, strange, poor, simple, base;
This one buys dust, and that a bauble sells:
But none to any scrutiny hints or tells
The haunting secrets hidden in each sad face.
Dies down the clamour when the dark draws near ”

“ Yet heavy bear in drops; and Night shall see
Unwearying as her stars still Imogen,
Pausing 'twixt death and life on one hushed word.
POLONIUS There haunts in Time's bare house an active ghost,
Enamoured of his name, Polonius. ”

“ His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars,
"Rest, rest, and rest again."
THE BINDWEED The bindweed roots pierce down
Deeper than men do lie,
Laid in their dark-shut graves
Their slumbering kinsmen by. ”