Walter de La Mare Quotes - Page 2

The only catalogue of this world's goods that really counts is that which we keep in the silence of the mind.

Very old are the woods; And the buds that break Out of the brier's boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are-- Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose.

What is the world, O soldiers? It is I, I, this incessant snow, This northern sky.

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

Three jolly huntsmen, In coats of red, Rode their horses Up to bed.

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.

All but blind In his chambered hole Gropes for worms The four-clawed Mole.

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

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; However rare rare it be; And when I crumble, who will remember This lady of the West Country?

Oh, pity the poor glutton Whose troubles all begin In struggling on and on to turn What's out into what's in.

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

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

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.

A face peered. All the grey night In chaos of vacancy shone; Nought but vast Sorrow was there The sweet cheat gone.

The sandy cat by the Farmer's chair Mews at his knee for dainty fare; Old Rover in his moss-greened house Mumbles a bone, and barks at a mouse. In the dewy fields the cattle lie Chewing the cud 'neath a fading sky; Dobbin at manger pulls his hay: Gone is another summer's day.

Poor tired Tim! It's sad for him He lags the long bright morning through, Ever so tired of nothing to do.

His brow is seamed with line and scar; His cheek is red and dark as wine; The fires as of a Northern star Beneath his cap of sable shine. His right hand, bared of leathern glove, Hangs open like an iron gin, You stoop to see his pulses move, To hear the blood sweep out and in. He looks some king, so solitary In earnest thought he seems to stand, As if across a lonely sea He gazed impatient of the land. Out of the noisy centuries The foolish and the fearful fade; Yet burn unquenched these warrior eyes, Time hath not dimmed, nor death dismayed.