The Listeners

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Title: The Listeners and Other Poems
Author: Walter de la Mare
Release Date: September 10, 2007 [eBook #22569]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LISTENERS AND OTHER POEMS***
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, storm, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
THE LISTENERS
AND OTHER POEMS
by
WALTER DE LA MARE
[Illustration]
New York?Henry Holt and Company
The author's thanks for permission to reprint certain of the poems included in this collection are due to the Editors of the _Saturday Review_, the _Thrush_, the _Pall Mall Magazine_, the _Odd Volume_, the _Lady's Realm_, the _English Review_, the _Westminster Gazette_, the _Commonwealth_, and the _Nation_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE THREE CHERRY TREES 1
OLD SUSAN 3
OLD BEN 5
MISS LOO 7
THE TAILOR 9
MARTHA 10
THE SLEEPER 12
THE KEYS OF MORNING 14
RACHEL 16
ALONE 17
THE BELLS 19
THE SCARECROW 21
NOD 23
THE BINDWEED 25
WINTER 26
THERE BLOOMS NO BUD IN MAY 27
NOON AND NIGHT FLOWER 29
ESTRANGED 30
THE TIRED CUPID 31
DREAMS 32
FAITHLESS 33
THE SHADE 34
BE ANGRY NOW NO MORE 35
SPRING 36
EXILE 37
WHERE? 38
MUSIC UNHEARD 39
ALL THAT'S PAST 41
WHEN THE ROSE IS FADED 43
SLEEP 44
THE STRANGER 45
NEVER MORE, SAILOR 47
THE WITCH 49
ARABIA 52
THE MOUNTAINS 54
QUEEN DJENIRA 55
NEVER-TO-BE 57
THE DARK CHATEAU 59
THE DWELLING-PLACE 61
THE LISTENERS 64
TIME PASSES 66
BEWARE! 68
THE JOURNEY 69
HAUNTED 74
SILENCE 76
WINTER DUSK 78
AGES AGO 80
HOME 82
THE GHOST 84
AN EPITAPH 85
'THE HAWTHORN HATH A DEATHLY SMELL' 86
THE THREE CHERRY TREES
There were three cherry trees once,?Grew in a garden all shady;?And there for delight of so gladsome a sight,?Walked a most beautiful lady,?Dreamed a most beautiful lady.
Birds in those branches did sing,?Blackbird and throstle and linnet,?But she walking there was by far the most fair--?Lovelier than all else within it,?Blackbird and throstle and linnet.
But blossoms to berries do come,?All hanging on stalks light and slender,?And one long summer's day charmed that lady away,?With vows sweet and merry and tender;?A lover with voice low and tender.
Moss and lichen the green branches deck;?Weeds nod in its paths green and shady:?Yet a light footstep seems there to wander in dreams,?The ghost of that beautiful lady,?That happy and beautiful lady.
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;?And shake her round old silvery head,?With--'You!--I thought you was in bed!'--?Only to tilt her book again,?And rooted in Romance remain.
OLD BEN
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, they are gone;?His garden then will be?Denser and shadier and greener,?Greener the moss-grown tree.
MISS LOO
When thin-strewn memory I look through,?I see most clearly poor Miss Loo,?Her tabby cat, her cage of birds,?Her nose, her hair--her muffled words,?And how she'd open her green eyes,?As if in some immense surprise,?Whenever as we sat at tea?She made some small remark to me.
It's always drowsy summer when?From out the past she comes again;?The westering sunshine in a pool?Floats in her parlour still and cool;?While the slim bird its lean wires shakes,?As into piercing song it breaks;?Till Peter's pale-green eyes ajar?Dream, wake; wake, dream, in one brief bar.
And I am sitting, dull and shy,?And she with gaze of vacancy,?And large hands folded on the tray,?Musing the afternoon away;?Her satin bosom heaving slow?With sighs that softly ebb and flow,?And her plain face in such dismay,?It seems unkind to look her way:?Until all cheerful back will come?Her cheerful gleaming spirit home:?And one would think that poor Miss Loo?Asked nothing else, if she had you.
THE TAILOR
Few footsteps stray when dusk droops o'er?The