Walter De La Mare

Three jolly Farmers
    Once bet a pound
Each dance the others would
    Off the ground.
Out of their coats
    They slipped right soon,
And neat and nicesome
    Put each his shoon.
One - Two - Three! -
    And away they go,
Not too fast,
    And not too slow;
Out from the elm-tree's
    Noonday shadow,
Into the sun
    And across the meadow.
Past the schoolroom,
    With knees well bent
Fingers a-flicking,
    They dancing went.
Up sides and over,
    And round and round,
They crossed click-clacking,
    The Parish bound,
By Tupman's meadow
    They did their mile,
Tee-to-tum
    On a three-barred stile.
Then straight through Whipham,
    Downhill to Week,
Footing it lightsome,
    Bu...

Three jolly Farmers
Once bet a pound
Each dance the others would
Off the ground.
Out of their coats
They slipped right soon,
And neat and nicesome,
Put each his shoon.
One - Two - Three! -
And away they go,
Not too fast,
And not too slow;
Out from the elm-tree's
Noonday shadow,
Into the sun
And across the meadow.
Past the schoolroom,
With knees well bent
Fingers a-flicking,
They dancing went.
Up sides and over,
And round and round,
They crossed click-clacking,
The Parish bound,
By Tupman's meadow
They did their mile,
Tee-t-tum
On a three-barred stile.
Then straight through Whipham,
Downhill to Week,
Footing it lightsome,
But not too quick,
Up fields to Watchet,
And on through ...

Sad is old Ben Thistlewaite,
Now his day is done,
And all his children
Far away are gone.

He sits beneath his jasmined porch,
His stick between his knees,
His eyes fixed vacant
On his moss-grown trees.

Grass springs in the green path,
His flowers are lean and dry,
His thatch hangs in wisps against
The evening sky.

He has no heart to care now,
Though the winds will blow
Whistling in his casement,
And the rain drip thro'.

He thinks of his old Bettie,
How she'd shake her head and say,
'You'll live to wish my sharp old tongue
Could scold - some day,'

But as in pale high autumn skies
The swallows float and play,
His restless thoughts pass to and fro,
But nowhere stay.

Soft, on the morrow, t...

'Come!' said Old Shellover.
'What?' says Creep.
'The horny old Gardener's fast asleep;
The fat cock Thrush
To his nest has gone;
And the dew shines bright
In the rising Moon;
Old Sallie Worm from her hole doth peep:
Come!' said Old Shellover.
'Aye!' said Creep.

When Susan's work was done, she would 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 would 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 would 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 would glance into reality;
And shake her round o...

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,

There runs a crisscross pattern of small leaves
Espalier, in a fading summer air,
And there Ophelia walks, an azure flower,
Whom wind, and snowflakes, and the sudden rain
Of love's wild skies have purified to heaven.
There is a beauty past all weeping now
In that sweet, crooked mouth, that vacant smile;
Only a lonely grey in those mad eyes,
Which never on earth shall learn their loneliness.
And when amid startled birds she sings lament,
Mocking in hope the long voice of the stream,
It seems her heart's lute hath a broken string.
Ivy she hath, that to old ruin clings;
And rosemary, that sees remembrance fade;
And pansies, deeper than the gloom of dreams;
But ah! if utterable, would this earth
Remain the base, unreal thing it is?
Better be out of sight of p...

From his cradle in the glamourie
They have stolen my wee brother,
Roused a changeling in his swaddlings
For to fret mine own poor mother.
Pules it in the candle light
Wi' a cheek so lean and white,
Chinkling up its eyne so wee,
Wailing shrill at her an' me.
It we'll neither rock nor tend
Till the Silent Silent send,
Lapping in their waesome arms
Him they stole with spells and charms,
Till they take this changeling creature
Back to its own fairy nature -
Cry! Cry! as long as may be,
Ye shall ne'er be woman's baby!

There haunts in Time's bare house an active ghost,
Enamoured of his name, Polonius.
He moves small fingers much, and all his speech
Is like a sampler of precisest words,
Set in the pattern of a simpleton.
His mirth floats eerily down chill corridors;
His sigh - it is a sound that loves a keyhole;
His tenderness a faint court-tarnished thing;
His wisdom prates as from a wicker cage;
His very belly is a pompous nought;
His eye a page that hath forgot his errand.
Yet in his brain - his spiritual brain -
Lies hid a child's demure, small, silver whistle
Which, to his horror, God blows, unawares,
And sets men staring. It is sad to think,
Might he but don indeed thin flesh and blood,
And pace important to Law's inmost room,
He would see, much marvelling, one imm...

Lone and alone she lies,
    Poor Miss 7,
Five steep flights from the earth,
    And one from heaven;
Dark hair and dark brown eyes, -
Not to be sad she tries,
Still - still it's lonely lies
    Poor Miss 7.

One day-long watch hath she,
    Poor Miss 7,
Not in some orchard sweet
    In April Devon -
Just four blank walls to see,
And dark come shadowily,
No moon, no stars, ah me!
    Poor Miss 7.

And then to wake again,
    Poor Miss 7,
To the cold night, to have
    Sour physic given;
Out of some dream of pain,
Then strive long hours in vain
Deep dreamless sleep to gain:
    Poor Miss 7.

Yet memory softly sings
    Poor Miss 7
Songs full of love and peace
    And gladness even;
Clear...

Thick in its glass
    The physic stands,
Poor Henry lifts
    Distracted hands;
His round cheek wans
    In the candlelight,
To smell that smell!
    To see that sight!

Finger and thumb
    Clinch his small nose,
A gurgle, a gasp,
    And down it goes;
Scowls Henry now;
    But mark that cheek,
Sleek with the bloom
    Of health next week!

When Queen Djenira slumbers through
    The sultry noon's repose,
From out her dreams, as soft she lies,
    A faint thin music flows.

Her lovely hands lie narrow and pale
    With gilded nails, her head
Couched in its banded nets of gold
    Lies pillowed on her bed.

The little Nubian boys who fan
    Her cheeks and tresses clear,
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful voices
    Seem afar to hear.

They slide their eyes, and nodding, say,
    "Queen Djenira walks to-day
The courts of the lord Pthamasar
    Where the sweet birds of Psuthys are."

And those of earth about her porch
    Of shadow cool and grey
Their sidelong beaks in silence lean,
    And silent flit away.

Rachel sings sweet -
Oh yes, at night,
Her pale face bent
In the candle-light,
Her slim hands touch
The answering keys,
And she sings of hope
And of memories:
Sings to the little
Boy that stands
Watching those slim,
Light, heedful hands.
He looks in her face;
Her dark eyes seem
Dark with a beautiful
Distant dream;
And still she plays,
Sings tenderly
To him of hope,
And of memory.

The sky was like a waterdrop
In shadow of a thorn,
Clear, tranquil, beautiful,
Dark, forlorn.

Lightning along its margin ran;
A rumour of the sea
Rose in profundity and sank
Into infinity.

Lofty and few the elms, the stars
In the vast boughs most bright;
I stood a dreamer in a dream
In the unstirring night.

Not wonder, worship, not even peace
Seemed in my heart to be:
Only the memory of one,
Of all most dead to me.

When slim Sophia mounts her horse
    And paces down the avenue,
It seems an inward melody
        She paces to.

Each narrow hoof is lifted high
    Beneath the dark enclust'ring pines,
A silver ray within his bit
    And bridle shines.

His eye burns deep, his tail is arched,
    And streams upon the shadowy air,
The daylight sleeks his jetty flanks,
    His mistress' hair.

Her habit flows in darkness down,
    Upon the stirrup rests her foot,
Her brow is lifted, as if earth
    She heeded not.

'Tis silent in the avenue,
    The sombre pines are mute of song,
The blue is dark, there moves no breeze
    The boughs among.

When slim Sophia mounts her horse
    And paces down the avenue,
It seems an inwar...

Bring not bright candles, for his eyes
In twilight have sweet company;
Bring not bright candles, else they fly -
His phantoms fly -
Gazing aggrieved on thee!

Bring not bright candles, startle not
The phantoms of a vacant room,
Flocking above a child that dreams -
Deep, deep in dreams, -
Hid, in the gathering gloom!

Bring not bright candles to those eyes
That between earth and stars descry,
Lovelier for the shadows there,
Children of air,
Palaces in the sky!

Sadly, O, sadly, the sweet bells of Baddeley
Played in their steeples when Robin was gone,
            Killed by an arrow,
            Shot by Cock Sparrow,
Out of a Maybush, fragrant and wan.

Grievedly, grievedly, tolled distant Shieveley,
When the Dwarfs laid poor Snow-white asleep on the hill,
            Drowsed by an apple,
            The Queen, sly and subtle,
Had cut with her knife on the blossomy sill.

When Sam goes back in memory,
    It is to where the sea
Breaks on the shingle, emerald-green,
    In white foam, endlessly;
He says - with small brown eye on mine -
    "I used to keep awake,
And lean from my window in the moon,
    Watching those billows break.
And half a million tiny hands,
    And eyes, like sparks of frost,
Would dance and come tumbling into the moon,
    On every breaker tossed.
And all across from star to star,
    I've seen the watery sea,
With not a single ship in sight,
    Just ocean there, and me;
And heard my father snore. And once,
    As sure as I'm alive,
Out of those wallowing, moon-flecked waves
    I saw a mermaid dive;
Head and shoulders above the wave,
    Plain as I now see you,
Combing her h...