WALTER DE LA MARE

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.

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.

Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

As long as I live I shall always be My Self - and no other, Just me.

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.

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.

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.

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

So, blind to Someone I must be.

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

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

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!

What lovely things Thy hand hath made.

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.

Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour

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

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.

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