Best 52 quotes of Walter De La Mare on MyQuotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

And some win peace who spend The skill of words to sweeten despair Of finding consolation where Life has but one dark end.

As soon as they're out of your sight, you are out of their mind.

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

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.

God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise.

He got out of bed and peeped through the blinds. To the east and opposite to him gardens and an apple-orchard lay, and there in strange liquid tranquility hung the morning star, and rose, rilling into the dusk of night the first grey of dawn. The street beneath its autumn leaves was vacant, charmed, deserted.

Hi! handsome hunting man Fire your little gun. 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!

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.

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.

It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old ditches.

Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour

Now that cleverness was the fashion most people were clever - even perfect fools; and cleverness after all was often only a bore: all head and no body

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

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

Once a man strays out of the common herd, he's more likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels.

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

Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon.

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.

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

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.

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

Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers.

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.

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

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

What lovely things Thy hand hath made.

When I lie where shades of darkness Shall no more assail mine eyes.

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, And all her lovelier things even lovelier grow; Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. When music sounds, out of the water rise Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face, With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. When music sounds, all that I was I am Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; And from Time's woods break into distant song The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.

Without imagination of the one kind or of the other, mortal existence is indeed a dreary and prosaic business... Illumined by the imagination, our life, whatever its defeats - is a never-ending unforeseen strangeness and adventure and mystery.

A poor old Widow in her weeds Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds; Not too shallow, and not too deep, And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip. Up shone May, like gold, and soon Green as an arbour grew leafy June. And now all summer she sits and sews Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows, Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet, Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit; Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells; Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells; Like Oberon's meadows her garden is Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees. Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs, And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes; And all she has is all she needs -- A poor Old Widow in her weeds.

The Listeners 'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest's ferny floor. And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller's head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; 'Is there anybody there?' he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller's call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:-- '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.

Fancies were all very well for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to reality.

I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless – in the long run. They – what shall we say? - have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other side. A loathsome process too.

In these days of faith-cures, and hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities – why, the simple old world grows very confusing. But rarely, very rarely novel.

Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door.

It was to be a day of queer experiences. He had never realized with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged.

Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls - as of a perfect hive of abhorrent memories. That high cupboard in the corner, from which certain bodiless shapes had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering out of his dreams; the crab-patterned paper that came alive as you stared; the window cold with menacing stars; the mouseholes, the rusty grate - trumpet of every wind that blows - these objects at once lustily shouted at him in their own original tongues. ("Out Of The Deep")

Poor sleepers should endeavor to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch-black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative. ("Out Of The Deep")

That's why I've just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it – just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making.

There was still an hour or two of daylight - even though clouds admitted only a greyish light upon the world, and his Uncle Timothy's house was by nature friendly to gloom. ("Out Of The Deep")

The time's gone by for sentiment and all that foolery. Mercy's all very well but after all it's justice that clinches the bargain.

The viewless air seemed to be flocking with hidden listeners. The very clearness and the crystal silence were their ambush. He alone seemed to be the target of cold and hostile scrutiny. There was not a breath to breathe in this crisp, pale sunshine. It was all too rare, too thin. The shadows lay like wings everlastingly folded.

We are *all* we are, and all in a sense we care to dream we are. And for that matter, anything outlandish, bizarre, is a godsend in this rather stodgy life. It is after all just what the old boy said – it's only the impossible that's credible; whatever credible may mean...

When there hasn't been anything there, nothing can be said to have vanished from the place where it has not been. ("Out Of The Deep")