Walter de la Mare (1873 – 1956)
English poet, short story writer, and novelist.
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.
It's a very odd thing&mdas;
As odd as can be—
That whatever Miss T. eats
Turns into Miss T.
"Is anybody there?" said the Traveler,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor.
‘What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I,
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky.
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon.
The delicate, invisible web you wove
The inexplicable mystery of sound.
So, blind to Someone
I must be.
A face peered. All the grey night
In chaos of vacancy shone;
Nought but vast sorrow was there—
The sweet cheat gone.
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
What lovely things
Thy hand hath made.
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.
Dobbin at manger pulls his hay:
Gone is another summer’s day.
“Bunches of grapes,” says Timothy;
“Pomegranates pink,” says Elaine;
“A junket of cream and a cranberry tart
For me,” says Jane.
Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,
I’m sure—sure—sure.
Wonderful lovely there she sat,
Singing the night away,
All in the solitudinous sea
Of that there lonely bay.
Or when the lawn
Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return
Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn,
The sad intangible who grieve and yearn...
Three jolly huntsmen,
In coats of red,
Rode their horses
Up to bed.
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
All but blind
In his chambered hole
Gropes for worms
The four-clawed Mole.