The Widow
Grief hath pacified her face;
Even hope might share so still a place;
Yet, on the silence of her heart,
Haply, if a strange footfall start,
Or a chance word of ecstasy
Cry through dim cloistered memory,
Into her eyes her soul will steal
To gaze into the irrevocable --
As if death had not power to keep
One who has loved her long asleep.
Now all things lovely she looks on
Seem lovely in oblivion;
And all things mute what shall not be
Richer than any melody.
Her narrow hands, like birds that make
A nest for some old instinct's sake,
Have hollowed a refuge for her face --
A narrow and a quiet place --
Where, far from the world's light, she may
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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Tit for Tat
Have you been catching fish, Tom Noddy?
Have you snared a weeping hare?
Have you whistled 'No Nunny' and gunned a poor bunny,
Or blinded a bird of the air?
Have you trod like a murderer through the green woods,
Through the dewy deep dingles and glooms,
While every small creature screamed shrill to Dame Nature
'He comes - and he comes!'?
Wonder I very much do,Tom Noddy,
If ever, when off you roam,
An ogre from space will stoop a lean face,
And lug you home:
Lug you home over his fence, Tom Noddy,
Of thorn-sticks nine yards high,
With your bent knees strung round his old iron gun
And your head a dan-dangling by:
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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Alexander
It was the Great Alexander,
Capped with a golden helm,
Sate in the ages, in his floating ship,
In a dead calm.
Voices of sea-maids singing
Wandered across the deep:
The sailors labouring on their oars
Rowed as in sleep.
All the high pomp of Asia,
Charmed by that siren lay,
Out of their weary and dreaming minds
Faded away.
Like a bold boy sate their Captain,
His glamour withered and gone,
In the souls of his brooding mariners,
While the song pined on.
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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The Mocking Fairy
'Won't you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?'
Quoth the Fairy, nidding, nodding in the garden;
'Can't you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?'
Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden;
But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still,
And the ivy-tod neath the empty sill,
And never from her window looked out Mrs. Gill
On the Fairy shrilly mocking in the garden.
'What have they done with you, you poor Mrs. Gill?'
Quoth the Fairy brightly glancing in the garden;
'Where have they hidden you, you poor old Mrs. Gill?'
Quoth the Fairy dancing lightly in the garden;
But night's faint veil now wrapped the hill,
Stark 'neath the stars stood the dead-still Mill,
And out of her cold cottage never answered Mrs. Gill
The Fairy mimbling, mambling in the garden.
poem by Walter de la Mare
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The Empty House
See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies—
‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent of heaven’s ways,
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,
On secrets hidden from sight.’
‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind,
‘Vacancy is all I find;
Every keyhole I have made
Wails a summons, faint and sad,
No voice ever answers me,
Only vacancy.’
‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills,
And far and near the quiet fills
With its tiny voice, and then
Hush falls again.
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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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.
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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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
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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The Seas of England
The seas of England are our old delight:
Let the loud billow of the shingly shore
Sing freedom on her breezes evermore
To all earth’s ships that sailing heave in sight!
The gaunt sea-nettle be our fortitude,
Sturdily blowing where the clear wave sips;
O, be the glory of our men and ships
Rapturous, woe unheeding hardihood!
There is great courage in a land that hath
Liberty guarded by the unearthly seas;
And ev’n to find peace at the last in these
How many a sailor hath sailed down to death!
Their names are like a splendour in an old song;
Their record shines like bays along the years;
Their jubilation is the cry man hears
Sailing sun-fronted the vast deeps among.
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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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;
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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The Strangers
Dim-berried is the mistletoe
With globes of sheenless grey,
The holly mid ten thousand thorns
Smoulders its fires away;
And in the manger Jesus sleeps
This Christmas Day.
Bull unto bull with hollow throat
Makes echo every hill,
Cold sheep in pastures thick with snow
The air with bleating fill;
While of his mother’s heart this Babe
Takes His sweet will.
All flowers and butterflies lie hid,
The blackbird and the thrush
Pipe but a little as they flit
Restless from bush to bush
Even to the robin Gabriel hath
Cried softly ‘Hush!’
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poem by Walter de la Mare
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