Walter De la Mare

“ Never in the whole of my reading, in the whole queer skein of things called my life—never have I encountered a single human being who expressed a tenth of the sheer delight of sharing—well, say, just that bit of garish moon in this tiny bowl of the world's greenery. 'Blind,' 'ungrateful,' 'worms of earth,' no word in the language could express our fatuity. Then I shall be free ... But there, it's time, as the old Scottish ballad says, you were awa'. And it's time, as some less anonymous poet says, I sought my couch. ”

“ Dusk was beginning to thicken—its strange thievish blur creeping across the whiteness of the snow. Presently, I found myself in a sort of walk or alley between a high hedge of yew and beech. And as I stood there, hesitating whether to go on or to turn back, a figure—a child of about my own age—appeared at its further end. She was dressed, I remember, in a cloak with a hood—crimson, I think, and carried a muff.
“At that very instant, as our young eyes met across the wintry air, the last of the evening's robins broke into its tiny, shrill, almost deafening peal of notes. And fled. ”

“ If we humans have climbed to where we are—though I don't believe it—by way of the happy and innocent animals, do you suppose we are going to suddenly jump half-a-dozen stories instead of ascending on and on and on? ”

“ But an old relative of my mother's who lived with us in those days used to tell us about the house, warning us, in that peculiarly enticing fashion old people have, not to tempt Providence in that direction. Let but its evil genius squawk once in our young ears—we might never come back. ”