Walter De la Mare

“ And each world's night in vain
I patient wait on sleep to unveil
Those vivid hills again.
Would that they three could know
How yet burns on in me
Love — from one lost in Paradise —
For their grave courtesy. ”

“ All, all, he read, ay, even the indifference,
⁠The vain talk, vainer silence, hope and dream.
He questioned me: "What seek'st thou then instead? "
⁠I bowed my face in the pale evening gleam.
Then gazed he on me with strange innocence:
"Even in the grave thou wilt have thyself," he said. ”

“ THERE is a wind where the rose was;
Cold rain where sweet grass was;
And clouds like sheep
Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.
Nought gold where your hair was;
Nought warm where your hand was ”

“ 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! ”

“ Three night-capped dwarfs to the surf would run
And soon were a-bob in the sea.
At six they went fishing, at nine they snared
Young foxes in the dells,
At noon on sweet berries and honey they fared,
And blew in their twisted shells.
Dark was the sea they gambolled in,
And thick with silver fish,
Dark as green glass blown clear and thin
To be a monarch's dish. ”

“ Who rots in his own head,
And counts the dead,
Not honest one — and two —
But for the ghosts they were,
Brave, faithful, true,
When, head in air,
In Earth's clear green and blue
Heaven they did share
With beauty who bade them there. . . .
There, now ! Death goes —
Mayhap I've wearied him. ”

“ Sweet as the bird's on the air,
When echo lurks by the waters to heed;
'Tis I speak thee fair."
"Dark is the hour! " "Ay, and cold."
"Lone is my house." "Ah, but mine?"
"Sight, touch, lips, eyes yearned in vain." ”

“ Thine the first peace, and mine the livelong strife;
Thine the clear dawn, and mine the night of life;
⁠Thine the unstained belief,
⁠Darkened in grief.
Scarce even a flower but thine its beauty and name,
⁠Dimmed, yet the same ”

“ 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.
This for the roving bee
Keeps open house, and this
Stainless and clear is, that in darkness she
May lure the moth to where her nectar is. ”

“ DOWN by the waters of the sea
Reigns the King of Never-to-be.
His palace walls are black with night;
His torches star and moon's light,
And for his timepiece deep and grave
Beats on the green unhastening wave. ”

“ A greedy Thief was there.
And that ravenous Thief he climbed up even higher,
Till into a chamber small
He crept where lay poor Robin's beauteous Children,
Lovelier in sleep withal.
Oh, fairer was their hair than gold of Goblet,
Beyond Silver their cheeks did shine,
And their little hands that lay upon the linen
Made that Thief's hard heart to pine. ”

“ On Time's dark waters in unearthly trouble:
Then, as the roar increased, and one fair tower
Of cloud took sky and stars with majesty,
He rose, his face a parchment of old age,
Sorrow hath scribbled o'er, and o'er, and o'er. ”

“ Spun betwixt earth and sky, bright as a berg
That hoards the sunlight in a myriad spires,
Crashed: and struck echo through an army's heart.
Then paused Goliath, and stared down again.
And fleet-foot Fear from rolling orbs perceived
Steadfast, unharmed, a stooping shepherd-boy
Frowning upon the target of his face. ”

“ To where the sun's last beam leans low
On Nod the shepherd's fold.
The hedge is quick and green with brier,
From their sand the conies creep;
And all the birds that fly in heaven
Flock singing home to sleep. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clear sang the faint far merry peal, then silence on the air,
And icy-still the frozen pool and poplars standing there:
Then lo! as Lucy turned her head and looked along the snow
She sees a witch — a witch she sees, come frisking to and fro. ”

“ Squander thy love as she that flings
⁠Her soul away on night;
Lovely are love's far echoings,
⁠Height imto height.
O, make no compact with the sun,
⁠No compact with the moon!
Night falls full-cloaked, and light is gone
⁠Sudden and soon. ”

“ No trophy in my hands I bring,
To this sad, sighing stream,
The neighings and the trumps and cries
Were but a dream.
Traitor to life, of life betrayed:
O, of thy mercy deep,
A dream my all, the all I ask
Is sleep. ”

“ A POOR old widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April — drip — drip — drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbour grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and tansy, meadowsweet.
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon's meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn till dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes; ”

“ Till I sleep in dust.
Sweet sounds, begone!
Though silence brings apace
Deadly disquiet
Of this homeless place;
And all I love
In beauty cries to me,
"We but vain shadows
And reflections be." ”

“ Poise but a wild bird's feather, it will stir
On lips that even in silence wear the badge
Only of truth. Let but a cricket wake,
And sing of home, and bid her lids unseal
The unspeakable hospitality of her eyes.
childless soul — call once her husband's name! ”

“ 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? ”

“ And found but shadow laid
Before my tired feet.
Comes no more dawn to me,
Nor bird of open skies.
Only his woods' deep gloom I see
Till, at the end of all, shall rise,
Afar and tranquilly,
Death's stretching sea. ”

“ All the world
Shake 'neath that weight
Of waters hurled:
But its whole shock
Can only stir
Thy dust to a quiet
Even quieter.
Thou mock'st at land
Who now art come
To such a small
And shallow home ”

“ His glamour withered and gone,
In the souls of his brooding mariners,
While the song pined on.
Time, like a falling dew,
Life, like the scene of a dream,
Laid between slumber and slumber,
Only did seem. . . . ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE MERMAIDS
SAND, sand; hills of sand;
And the wind where nothing is
Green and sweet of the land;
No grass, no trees,
No bird, no butterfly,
But hills, hills of sand,
And a burning sky. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ More beauteous than the feeble shine of Hesper
Lone in the lightening skies:
Till once again the Witch's guile entreat him;
But, worn with wisdom, he
Steadfast and cold shall choose the dark night's
Inhospitality. ”

“ Silence wherein to sing love's requiem?
No, no. Nor earth, nor air, nor fire, nor deep
Could lull poor mortal longingness asleep.
Somewhere there Nothing is; and there lost Man
Shall win what changeless vague of peace he can. ”

“ Her grave small lovely head,
Seemed half the meaning
Of the words she said.
"Once . . . once upon a time . . ."
Like a dream you dream in the night,
Fairies and gnomes stole out
In the leaf-green light. ”

“ Where never living creature stirs,
Nor sunbeam pierces through,
Is a tomb, green and crooked,—
Its faded legend gone,—
With but one rain-worn cherub's head
Of smouldering stone.
There, when the dusk is falling,
Silence broods so deep
It seems that every wind that breathes
Blows from the field of sleep. ”

“ Her cheeks were like wine,
Her eyes in her wee face
Like water-sparks shine,
Her niminy fingers
Her sleep tresses preen,
The which in the combing
She peeps out between;
Singing down-adown-derry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fair colours, beauteous flowers, faint-bloomed fruit
Made earth seem Paradise
To them that dwelt within this lonely house:
Like children of the gods in lasting peace,
They ate, sang, danced, as if each day's carouse
Need never pause, nor cease. ”

“ His eyes were sad as fishes that swim up
And stare upon an element not theirs
Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then
Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down,
Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ ROSE, like dim battlements, the hills and reared
Steep crags into the fading primrose sky;
But in the desolate valleys fell small rain,
Mingled with drifting cloud. I saw one come,
Like the fierce passion of that vacant place,
His face turned glittering to the evening sky ”

“ The shrill larks singing in the green meadows,
'Twas summertide, and, budding far and near,
The hedges thick with rose.
And now you're grown
A little girl, and this same helpless mite
Is come like such another bud half-grown,
Out of the wintry night. ”

“ And fetch me some honey, but be sure you don't laugh, —
He hates little girls that are rude, are rude,
He hates little girls that are rude."
Jane tapped at the door of the house in the wood,
And the dwarf looked over the wall,
He eyed her so queer, 'twas as much as she could
To keep from laughing at all, at all,
To keep from laughing at all.
His shoes down the passage came clod, clod, clod,
And when he opened the door,
He croaked so harsh, 'twas as much as she could
To keep from laughing the more, the more,
To keep from laughing the more. ”

“ Not that she's dead;
Only her soul is flown
Out of its last pure earthly mansion;
And cries instead
In the darkness, tender and clear,
Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love —
Love lies here. ”

“ She will but put her beauty by
And hie away.
Oh, but her beauty gone, how lonely
Then will seem all reverie,
How black to me!
All things will sad be made
And every hope a memory,
All gladness dead. ”

“ Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are sway-
ing,
Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove
Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obey-
ing,
Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love. ”

“ 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. ”