Walter de la Mare – Darkling, I Listen

Motley the Ghost by Walter de la Mare

‘Who knocks?’ ‘I, who was beautiful,
Beyond all dreams to restore,
I, from the roots of the dark thorn am hither.
And knock on the door.’

‘Who speaks?’ ‘I – once was my speech
Sweet as the bird’s on the air,
When echo lurks by the waters to heed;
‘Tis I speak thee fair.’

‘Dark is the hour!’ ‘Ay, and cold.’
‘Lone is my house.’ ‘Ah, but mine?’
‘Sight, touch, lips, eyes yearned in vain.’
‘Long dead these to thine…’

Silence. Still faint on the porch
Brake the flames of the stars.
In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand
Over keys, bolts, and bars.

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

The Listeners by Walter de la Mare

‘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.

The Path by Walter de la Mare

Is it an abbey that I see
Hard-by that tapering poplar-tree,
Whereat that path hath end?
‘Tis wondrous still
That empty hill,
Yet calls me, friend.

Smooth is the turf, serene the sky,
The timeworn, crumbling roof awry;
Within that turret slim
Hangs there a bell
Whose faint notes knell?
Do colours dim

Burn in that angled window there,
Grass-green, and crimson, azure rare?
Would, from that narrow door,
One, looking in,
See, gemlike, shine
On walls and floor

Candles whose aureole flames must seem –
So still they burn – to burn in dream?
And do they cry, and say,
‘See, stranger; come!
Here is thy home;
No longer stray!’

The Stranger by Walter De la Mare

Half-hidden in a graveyard,
In the blackness of a yew,
Where never living creature stirs,
Nor sunbeam pierces through,

Is a tombstone green and crooked,
Its faded legend gone,
And but one rain-worn cherub’s head
To sing of the unknown.

There, when the dusk is falling,
Silence broods so deep
It seems that every wind that breathes
Blows from the fields of sleep.

Day breaks in heedless beauty,
Kindling each drop of dew,
But unforsaking shadow dwells
Beneath this lonely yew.

And, all else lost and faded,
Only this listening head
Keeps with a strange unanswering smile
Its secret with the dead.

The Empty House by Walter de La Mare

See this house, how dark it is

Beneath its vast-boughed trees!

Not one trembling leaflet cries

To that Watcher in the skies—

‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze,

Innocent of heaven’s ways,

Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,

On secrets hidden from sight.’
‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind,

‘Vacancy is all I find;

Every keyhole I have made

Wails a summons, faint and sad,

No voice ever answers me,

Only vacancy.’

‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills,

And far and near the quiet fills

With its tiny voice, and then

Hush falls again.
Mute shadows creeping slow

Mark how the hours go.

Every stone is mouldering slow.

And the least winds that blow

Some minutest atom shake,

Some fretting ruin make

In roof and walls. How black it is

Beneath these thick boughed trees!

Haunted by Walter De La Mare

From out the wood I watched them shine, –
The windows of the haunted house,
Now ruddy as enchanted wine,
Now dim as flittermouse.

There went a thin voice piping airs
Along the grey and crooked walks, –
A garden of thistledown and tares,
Bright leaves, and giant stalks.

The twilight rain shone at its gates,
Where long-leaved grass in shadow grew;
And black in silence to her mates
A voiceless raven flew.

Lichen and moss the lone stones greened,
Green paths led lightly to its door,
Keen from her lair the spider leaned,
And dusk to darkness wore.

Amidst the sedge a whisper ran,
The West shut down a heavy eye,
And like last tapers, few and wan,
The watch-stars kindled in the sky.