Walter de la Mare quotes

What lovely things Thy hand hath made. (Walter de la Mare)
For beauty with sorrow Is a burden hard to be borne: The evening light on the foam, and the swans, there; That music, remote, forlorn.
Walter de la Mare
His are the quiet steeps of dreamland, The waters of no-more-pain; His ram's bell rings ‘neath an arch of stars, "Rest, rest, and rest again.”.
Walter de la Mare
What is the world, O soldiers? It is I, I, this incessant snow, This northern sky.
Walter de la Mare
Three jolly huntsmen, In coats of red, Rode their horses Up to bed.
Walter de la Mare
All but blind In his chambered hole Gropes for worms The four-clawed Mole.
Walter de la Mare
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
Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose.
Walter de la Mare
Poor tired Tim! It's sad for him He lags the long bright morning through, Ever so tired of nothing to do.
Walter de la Mare
Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon.
Walter de la Mare
So, blind to Someone I must be. (Walter de la Mare)
We wake and whisper awhile, But, the day gone by, Silence and sleep like fields Of amaranth lie.
Walter de la Mare
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.
Walter de la Mare
A face peered. All the grey night In chaos of vacancy shone; Nought but vast sorrow was there- The sweet cheat gone.
Walter de la Mare
Dobbin at manger pulls his hay: Gone is another summer's day.
Walter de la Mare
"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.
Walter de la Mare
After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts – like a Chinese nest of boxes – oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front – in our ancestors, back and back until...
Walter de la Mare
It's a very odd thing&mdas; As odd as can be- That whatever Miss T. eats Turns into Miss T.
Walter de la Mare
Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers.
Walter de la Mare
A lost but happy dream may shed its light upon our waking hours, and the whole day may be infected with the gloom of a dreary or sorrowful one; yet of neither may we be able to recover a trace.
Walter de la Mare
All day long the door of the sub-conscious remains just ajar; we slip through to the other side, and return again, as easily and secretly as a cat. (Walter de la Mare)
Softly along the road of evening, In a twilight dim with rose, Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dew Old Nod, the shepherd, goes.
Walter de la Mare
Wonderful lovely there she sat, Singing the night away, All in the solitudinous sea Of that there lonely bay.
Walter de la Mare
A bumpity ride in a wagon of hay.
Walter de la Mare
Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour-let no night Seal thy sense in deathly slumber Till to delight Thou hast paid thy utmost blessing.
Walter de la Mare