Walter De la Mare

“ Some with a smile may pay and some with a sigh;
So all be healed, restored, contented—it is no matter—
⁠So all be happy at heart to bid good-bye.
But know, our clocks are the world's; Night's wings
⁠are leaden,
Pain languidly sports with the hours; have
⁠courage, sir!
We wake but to bring thee slumber, our drowsy syrups
⁠Sleep beyond dreams on the weary will confer.
Ghosts may be ours; but gaze thou not too closely
If haply in chill of the dark thou rouse to see
One silent of foot, hooded, and hollow of visage,
⁠Pause, with secret eyes, to peer out at thee. ”

“ Burns red with menace in heaven's midnight cope.
Friendly thy body: guard its solitude.
Sure shelter is thy heart. It once had rest
Where founts miraculous thy lips endewed,
Yet nought loomed further than thy mother's breast.
O brave adventure! Ay, at danger slake
Thy thirst, lest life in thee should, sickening, quail;
But not toward nightmare goad a mind awake,
Nor to forbidden horizons bend thy sail—
Seductive outskirts whence in trance prolonged
Thy gaze, at stretch of what is sane-secure,
Dreams out on steeps by shapes demoniac thronged
And vales wherein alone the dead endure. ”

“ A bind of green-grasses in their hair,
52Marvellously gentle, feater far than children,
In gesture, mien and speech,
Hastening onward in translucent shafts of sunshine,
And gossiping each with each.
Straw-light their locks, on neck and shoulder falling,
Faint of almond the silks they wore,
Spun not of worm, but as if inwoven of moonbeams
And foam on rock-bound shore;
Like lank-legged grasshoppers in June-tide meadows,
Amalillios of the day,
Hungrily gazed upon by me—a stranger,
In unknown regions astray. ”

“ The last thin rumour of a feeble bell far ringing,
The last blind rat to spurn the mildewed rye.
A hardening darkness glasses the haunted eye,
Shines into nothing the watcher's burnt-out candle,
Wreathes into scentless nothing the wasting incense,
Faints in the outer silence the hunting cry.
Love of its muted music breathes no sigh,
Thought in her ivory tower gropes in her spinning,
Toss on in vain the whispering trees of Eden,
Last of all last words spoken is, Good-bye. ”

“ Frown above the waterfalls
⁠Silver and cold;
⁠Timelessly old:
⁠Not that way.
Not toward Death, who, stranger, fairer,
Than any siren turns his head—
Than sea-couched siren, arched with rain-bows,
Where knell the waves of her ocean bed. ”

“ And dark imaginations ripe the vine.
Bethink thee: every enticing league thou wend
Beyond the mark where life its bound hath set
Will lead thee at length where human pathways end
And the dark enemy spreads his maddening net. ”

“ Into infinity shall attract thine eyes.
4'No...? Well, lest promise in performance faint,
A less inviting prospect will I paint.
I bid thee adjure thy Yesterday, and say:
"As thou wast, Enemy, so be To-day.—
Immure me in the same close narrow room;
Be hated toil the lamp to light its gloom;
Make stubborn my pen; sift dust into my ink;
Forbid mine eyes to see, my brain to think.
Scare off the words whereon the mind is set.
Make memory the power to forget.
Constrain imagination; bind its wing;
Forbid the unseen Enchantresses to sing. ”

“ THOU who know'st all the sorrows of this earth—
I pray Thee, ponder, ere again Thou turn
Thine hour-glass over again, since one sole birth.
To poor clay-cold humanity, makes yearn
A heart at passion with life's endless coil. ”

“ Planet to sun return again;
The universe, to sleep from wake,
In a last peace remain.
Alas, the futility of care
That, spinning thought to thought, doth weave
An idle argument on the air
We love not, nor believe. ”

“ In hollow heaven the stars were at play;
⁠Wan glow-worms greened the pool-side grass;
Dipped the wide-bellied boat. His prey
⁠Gazed on; nor breathed. Alas!—
Long sterile years had come and gone;
⁠Youth, like a distant dream, was sped;
Heart, hope, and eyes had hungered on. . . .
⁠He turned a shaking head,
And clumsily groped amid the gold,
⁠Sleek with night dews, of that tangling hair,
Till pricked his finger keen and cold
⁠The barb imbedded there.
Teeth clenched, he drew his knife—'Snip, snip,'—
⁠Groaned, and sate shivering back ”

“ SOUNDLESS the moth-flit, crisp the death-watch tick;
Crazed in her shaken arbour bird did sing;
Slow wreathed the grease adown from soot-clogged wick:
The Cat looked long and softly at the King.
Mouse frisked and scampered, leapt, gnawed, squeaked ”

“ I cannot guess: why—why deny
Such beauty to the passer-by?
Out of a bush a nightingale
May expound his song; beneath that veil
A happy mouth no doubt can make
English sound sweeter for its sake. ”

“ In the vague of my mind those eyes
Still haunt me. One stands so near
I could take his hand, and be gone: —
No more in this house of dreams to sojourn aloof,
alone:
Could sigh, with full heart, and arise. ”

“ Would it mere blackened nought remain?
Strives it this beauty and life to express
Only in human consciousness?'
Oh, rather, idly breaks he in
To an Eden innocent of sin;
And, prouder than to be afraid. ”

“ She praises God in her beauty and grace,
Whispers delight. And there flows
A delicate wind from the Southern seas,
Kissing her leaves. She sighs.
While the birds in her tresses make merry;
Burns the Sun in the skies. ”

“ Stole to my eyes a lover from the dead;
Crying an incantation—learned, Where? When? . .
White swirled the foam, a fount, a blinding gleam
Of ice-cold breast, cruel eyes, wild mouth—and then
A still dirge echoing on from dream to dream. ”

“ Lest rouse the Old Enemy from his death-still swoon,
Lest crack that whip again—they fly, they float,
Scamper, breathe—'Paradise!' abscond, are gone....
84 AN EPITAPH
LAST, Stone, a little yet;
And then this dust forget.
But thou, fair Rose, bloom on.
For she who is gone
Was lovely too; nor would she grieve to be
Sharing in solitude her dreams with thee. ”

“ Where the green wave shelves to the sand,
And the rainbows are;
And an ageless sun beats fierce
From an empty sky:
There, O thou Shadow forlorn,
Is the wraith of thee, I.'
'Are you happy, most Lone?'
'Happy, forsooth!
Who am eyes of the air; voice of the foam;
Ah, happy in truth.
My hair is astream, this cheek
Glistens like silver, and see,
As the gold to the dross, the ghost in the mirk,
I am calling to thee.'
62'Nay, I am bound. ”

“ Or hang in stagnant quiet of the deep;
The brave, the afraid into one silence sold;
Their end a memory fainter than of sleep.
She held good merchandise. She paced in pride
The uncharted paths men trace in ocean's foam. ”

“ CORAL and clear emerald,
And amber from the sea,
Lilac-coloured amethyst,
Chalcedony;
The lovely Spirit of Air
Floats on a cloud and doth ride,
Clad in the beauties of earth
Like a bride. ”

“ Which hung, as if in hiding, in the gloom
⁠From evening's stealing rays.
Framed in fast-fading gilt, a child gazed there,
⁠Lovely and fair;
A face whose happiness was like sunlight spent
On some poor desolate soul in banishment,
⁠Mutely his grief to share. ”

“ Musking its chaces, bloomed the brier-rose fair;
Spellbound as if in trance the pine-trees stood.
Through moss, and pebbled rut, the wheels rasped on;
That Ancient drowsing on his box. And still
The bracken track with glazing sunbeams shone;
Laboured the horses, straining at the hill. . . .
But now — a verdurous height with eve-shade sweet;
Far, far to West the Delectable Mountains glowed. ”

“ The spectre of frost will stalk, and a silence make,
⁠And snow's white shroud be spread.
O Self! O self! Wake from thy common sleep!
Fling off the destroyer's net. He hath blinded
⁠and bound thee.
In nakedness sit; pierce thy stagnation, and weep ”

“ This darkened phantasm walks
Where nightmares are:
In a frenzy of life and light,
Crisscross—a menacing throng—
They gibe, they squeal at the stranger,
Jostling along,
Their faces cadaverous grey. ”

“ Cried 'neath her frozen eaves, 'I burn here!'
Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like,
Wand within fingers, locks enspangled,
Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,
She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow—
Green as stalks of weeds in water—
Breathed: stirred. ”

“ With the longed-for crust;
Though heart within is sour
With disgust.
Long hours there are,
When mutely tapping—well,
Is it to Vacancy
I these tidings tell?
Knock these numb fingers against
An empty cell? ”

“ Smile, ponder—and are gone.
'Are we not flesh and blood? Mark well.
We touch you with our hands. We speak
A tongue that may earth's secrets tell:
Why further will you seek?'
'Far have I come, and far must fare. ”

“ Gently amused to see
My ignorant wonderment. He sighed.
'It was a nightingale,' he said,
'That sotto voce cons the song
He'll sing when dark is spread;
And Night's vague hours are sweet and long. ”

“ As lovers will in woodlands bare.
Nought heeded they where now they stood,
Since theirs its alien solitude
Beyond imagination fair.
The light an earthly candle gives
When it is quenched leaves only dark ”

“ Breathed not one midnight flower
Peace in thy broken mind?—
'Brief, yet sweet, is life's hour.'
Syllabled thy last tide—
By as dark moon stirred,
And doomed to forlorn unrest—
Not one compassionate word? . . . ”

“ Mouse frisked and scampered, leapt, gnawed, squeaked;
Small at the window looped cowled bat a-wing;
The dim-lit rafters with the night-mist reeked:
The Cat looked long and softly at the King.
O wondrous robe enstarred, in night dyed deep:
O air scarce-stirred with the Court's far junketing:
O stagnant Royalty—A-swoon? Asleep?
The Cat looked long and softly at the King.
64 GOLD
SIGHED the wind to the wheat:—
'The Queen who is slumbering there,
Once bewildered the rose;
Scorned, "Thou un-fair!" ”

“ In a dense wood, a drear wood,
Dark water is flowing;
Deep, deep, beyond sounding,
A flood ever flowing.
There harbours no wild bird,
No wanderer strays there;
Wreathed in mist, sheds pale Ishtar
Her sorrowful rays there.
Take thy net; cast thy line ”

“ And the dark enemy spreads his maddening net.
Comfort thee, comfort thee. Thy Father knows
How wild man's ardent spirit, fainting, yearns
For mortal glimpse of death's immortal rose,
The garden where the invisible blossom burns. ”

“ Burn in thy flowered locks, though creeping daybreak wan
⁠:Prove thee but dream.
Noonday to night the enigma of thine eyes
Frets with desire their travel-wearied brain,
Till in the vast of dark the ice-cold moon arise
⁠And pour them peace again ”

“ Is trodden to infinite dust;
By gnawing lichens decked.
Toward what eventual dream
Sleeps its cold on,
When into ultimate dark
These lives shall be gone,
And even of man not a shadow remain
Of all he has done? ”

“ Heavy hung ambrosial fragrance;
Moonbeams blanched her ravished face.
Frail and clear the notes delusive;
Mocking phantoms in a rout
Thridded the night-cloistered thickets,
Wove their sorceries in and out. . . . ”

“ From crock of bone-dry crusts and mouse-gnawn cheese—
Nay, just one whisper in that long, long ear—
Awake; rejoice. Another Day is here:—
'A virgin wilderness, which, hour by hour,
Mere happy idleness shall bring to flower.
Barren and arid though its sands now seem,
Wherein oasis becks not, shines no stream. ”

“ Beyond dream of spirits penned to earth,
Condemned to pine and die? . . .
Hath serving Nature, bidden of the gods,
Thick-screened Man's narrow sky,
And hung these Stygian veils of fog
To hide his dingied sty? ”

“ Hungry owls drowse out their hour. . . .
Walk in beauty. Vaunt thy rose.
Flaunt thy transient loveliness.
Pace for pace with thee there goes
A shape that hath not come to bless.
I thine enemy? . . . Nay, nay. ”