November

THERE is 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 warm where your hand was,

Nought gold where your hair was,

But phantom, forlorn,

Beneath the thorn,

Your ghost where your face was.

Cold wind where your voice was,

Tears, tears where my heart was,

And ever with me,

Child, ever with me,

Silence where hope was.

Walter De La Mare

The Song of Finis

AT the edge of All the Ages

A Knight sate on his steed,

His armor red and thin with rust

His soul from sorrow freed;

And he lifted up his visor

From a face of skin and bone,

And his horse turned head and whinnied

As the twain stood there alone.

No bird above that steep of time

Sang of a livelong quest;

No wind breathed,

Rest:

"Lone for an end!" cried Knight to steed,

Loosed an eager rein--

Charged with his challenge into space:

And quiet did quiet remain.

Walter De La Mare

The Listeners

"IS anybody there?" said the Traveler,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence chomped the grasses

Of the forest's ferny floor.

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the traveler's head:

And he smote upon the door a second time;

"Is there anybody there?" he said.

But no one descended to the Traveler;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his gray eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveler's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:--

"Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word," he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Aye, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Walter De La Mare

An Epitaph

HERE lies a most beautiful lady,

Light of step and heart was she;

I think she was the most beautiful lady

That ever was in the West Country.

But beauty vanishes, beauty passes;

However rare--rare it be;

And when I crumble,who will remember

This lady of the West Country.

Walter De La Mare

Old Susan

WHEN Susan's work was done, she'd sit

With one fat guttering candle lit,

And window opened wide to win

The sweet night air to enter in;

There, with a thumb to keep her place

She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face.

Her mild eyes gliding very slow

Across the letters to and fro,

While wagged the guttering candle flame

In the wind that through the window came.

And sometimes in the silence she

Would mumble a sentence audibly,

Or shake her head as if to say,

"You silly souls, to act this way!"

And never a sound from night I'd hear,

Unless some far-off cock crowed clear;

Or her old shuffling thumb should turn

Another page; and rapt and stern,

Through her great glasses bent on me,

She'd glance into reality;

And shake her round old silvery head,

With--"You!--I thought you was in bed!"--

Only to tilt her book again,

And rooted in Romance remain.

Walter De La Mare

Martha

"ONCE...Once upon a time..."

Over and over again,

Martha would tell us her stories,

In the hazel glen.

Hers were those clear gray eyes

You watch, and the story seems

Told by their beautifulness

Tranquil as dreams.

She'd sit with her two slim hands

Clasped round her bended knees;

While we on our elbows lolled,

And stared at ease.

Her voice and her narrow chin,

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.

And her beauty far away

Would fade, as her voice ran on,

Till hazel and summer sun

And all were gone:--

All fordone and forgot;

And like clouds in the height of the sky,

Our hearts stood still in the hush

Of an age gone by.

Walter De La Mare

Winter

CLOUDED with snow

The cold winds blow,

And shrill on leafless bough

The robin with its burning breast

Alone sings now.

The rayless sun,

Day's journey done,

Sheds its last ebbing light

On fields in leagues of beauty spread

Unearthly white.

Thick draws the dark,

And spark by spark,

The frost-fires kindle, and soon

Over that sea of frozen foam

Floats the white moon.

Walter De La Mare

All that's Past

VERY old are the woods;

And the buds that break

Out of the brier's boughs,

When March winds wake,

So old with their beauty are--

Oh, no man knows

Through what wild centuries

Roves back the rose.

Very old are the brooks;

And the rills that rise

Where snow sleeps cold beneath

The azure skies

Sing such a history

Of come and gone,

Their every drop is as wise

As Solomon.

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.

Walter De La Mare

Arabia

FAR are the shades of Arabia,

Where the Princes ride at noon,

'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,

Under the ghost of the moon;

And so dark is that vaulted purple

Flowers in the forest rise

And toss into blossom 'gainst the phantom stars

Pale in the noonday skies.

Sweet is the music of Arabia

In my heart, when out of dreams

I still in the thin clear mirk of dawn

Descry her gliding streams;

Hear her strange lutes on the green banks

Ring loud with the grief and delight

Of the dim-silked, dark-haired Musicians

In the brooding silence of night.

They haunt me -- her lutes and her forests;

No beauty on earth I see

But shadowed with that dream recalls

Her loveliness to me:

Still eyes look coldly upon me,

Cold voices whisper and say --

'He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,

They have stolen his wits away.'

Walter De La Mare

Fare Well

WHEN I lie where shades of darkness

Shall no more assail mine eyes,

Nor the rain make lamentation

When the wind sighs;

How will fare the world whose wonder

Was the very proof of me?

Memory fades, must the remembered

Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders

Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,

May these loved and loving faces

Please other men!

May the rusting harvest hedgerow

Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,

And as happy children gather

Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,

Every hour. Let no night

Seal thy sense in deathly slumber

Till to delight

Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;

Since that all things thou wouldst praise

Beauty took from those who loved them

In other days.

Walter De La Mare

The Ghost

PEACE in thy hands,

Peace in thine eyes,

Peace on thy brow;

Flower of a moment in the eternal hour,

Peace with me now.

Not a wave breaks,

Not a bird calls,

My heart, like a sea,

Silent after a storm that hath died,

Sleeps within me.

All the night's dews,

All the world's leaves,

All winter's snow

Seem with their quiet to have stilled in life's dream

All sorrowing now.

Walter De La Mare

The Huntsmen

THREE jolly gentlemen,

In coats of red,

Rode their horses

Up to bed.

Three jolly gentlemen

Snored till morn,

Their horses champing

The golden corn.

Three jolly gentlemen

At break of day,

Came clitter-clatter down the stairs

And galloped away.

Walter De La Mare

Napoleon

'WHAT is the world, O soldiers?

       It is I:

I, this incessant snow,

This northern sky;

Soldiers, this solitude

Through which we go

       Is I.'

Walter De La Mare

Nicholas Nye

THISTLE and darnell and dock grew there,

And a bush, in the corner, of may,

On the orchard wall I used to sprawl

In the blazing heat of the day;

Half asleep and half awake,

While the birds went twittering by,

And nobody there my lone to share

But Nicholas Nye.

Nicholas Nye was lean and gray,

Lame of leg and old,

More than a score of donkey's years

He had been since he was foaled;

He munched the thistles, purple and spiked,

Would sometimes stoop and sigh,

And turn to his head, as if he said,

"Poor Nicholas Nye!"

Alone with his shadow he'd drowse in the meadow,

Lazily swinging his tail,

At break of day he used to bray,--

Not much too hearty and hale;

But a wonderful gumption was under his skin,

And a clean calm light in his eye,

And once in a while; he'd smile:--

Would Nicholas Nye.

Seem to be smiling at me, he would,

From his bush in the corner, of may,--

Bony and ownerless, widowed and worn,

Knobble-kneed, lonely and gray;

And over the grass would seem to pass

'Neath the deep dark blue of the sky,

Something much better than words between me

And Nicholas Nye.

But dusk would come in the apple boughs,

The green of the glow-worm shine,

The birds in nest would crouch to rest,

And home I'd trudge to mine;

And there, in the moonlight, dark with dew,

Asking not wherefore nor why,

Would brood like a ghost, and as still as a post,

Old Nicholas Nye.

Walter De La Mare

The Scribe

WHAT lovely things

Thy hand hath made:

The smooth-plumed bird

In its emerald shade,

The seed of the grass,

The speck of the stone

Which the wayfaring ant

Stirs -- and hastes on!

Though I should sit

By some tarn in thy hills,

Using its ink

As the spirit wills

To write of Earth's wonders,

Its live, willed things,

Flit would the ages

On soundless wings

Ere unto Z

My pen drew nigh

Leviathan told,

And the honey-fly:

And still would remain

My wit to try --

My worn reeds broken,

The dark tarn dry,

All words forgotten --

Thou, Lord, and I.

Walter De La Mare

Silver

SLOWLY, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

This way, and that, she peers, and sees

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;

A harvest mouse goes scampering by,

With silver claws and a silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,

By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Walter De La Mare

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 the changing

The unchangeable.

Oh, thus thy beauty,

Loveliest on earth to me,

Dark with no sorrow, shines

And burns, with thee.

Walter De La Mare

The Song of Shadows

SWEEP thy faint strings, Musician,

With thy long, lean hand;

Downward the starry tapers burn,

Sinks soft the waning sand;

The old hound whimpers couched in sleep,

The embers smoulder low;

Across the wall the shadows

Come, and go.

Sweep softly thy strings, Musician,

The minutes mount to hours;

Frost on the windless casement weaves

A labyrinth of flowers;

Ghosts linger in the darkenng air,

hearken at the opening door;

Music hath called them, dreaming,

Home once more.

Walter De La Mare

The Spirit of Air

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.

So doth she haunt me; and words

Tell but a tithe of the tale.

Sings all the sweetness of Spring

Even in the nightengale?

Nay, but with echoes she cries

Of the valley of love;

Dews on the thorns of her feet,

And darkness above.

Walter de la Mare