Walter de la Mare Quotes

Old Rover in his moss-greened house
Mumbles a bone, and barks at a mouse.

"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.

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.

A bumpity ride in a wagon of hay

Do diddle di do,
Poor Jim Jay
Got stuck fast
In Yesterday.

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.

Dobbin at manger pulls his hay:
Gone is another summer’s day.

Who said "Peacock Pie"?
The old king to the sparrow:
Who said "Crops are ripe"?
Rust to the harrow. Who said, "Ay, mum's the word"?
Sexton to willow.
Who said, "Green dusk for dream?"
Moss for a pillow. Who said, "All Time’s delight
Hath she for narrow bed;
Life’s troubled bubble broken"?—
That’s what I said.

Bang! Now the animal
Is dead and dumb and done.
Nevermore to peep again, creep again, leap again,
Eat or sleep or drink again, oh, what fun!

We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.

Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,
I’m sure—sure—sure.

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.”

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.

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.

Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.