Walter De La Mare Quotes & Sayings

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. — Walter De La Mare

What lovely things Thy hand hath made. — Walter De La Mare

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") — Walter De La Mare

It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old ditches. — Walter De La Mare

As long as I live I shall always be My Self - and no other, Just me. — Walter De La Mare

As soon as they're out of your sight, you are out of their mind. — Walter De La Mare

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. — Walter De La Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon. — Walter De La Mare

Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers. — Walter De La Mare

An hour's terror is better than a lifetime of timidity. — Walter De La Mare

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. — Walter De La Mare

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

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. — Walter De La Mare

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! — Walter De La Mare

It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer unadulterated evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous. Folly, heedlessness, vanity, pride, craft, meanness, stupidity - yes. But even Iagos in this world are few, and devilry is as rare as witchcraft. ("Bad Company") — Walter De La Mare

It was this mystery, bereft now of all fear, and this beauty together that made life the endless, changing and yet changeless, thing it was. And yet mystery and loveliness alike were really only appreciable with one's legs, as it were, dangling down over into the grave. — Walter De La Mare

Do diddle di do, Poor Jim Jay Got stuck fast In Yesterday. — Walter De La Mare

All but blind In his chambered hole Gropes for worms The four-clawed Mole. — Walter De La Mare

Slim cunning hands at rest, and cozening eyes,
Under this stone one loved too wildly lies;
How false she was, no granite could declare;
Nor all earth's flowers, how fair. — Walter De La Mare

So, blind to Someone I must be. — Walter De La Mare

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

Thinking is like a fountain. Once it gets going at a certain pressure, well, it almost impossible to turn it off. And, my hat! what odd things come up with the water!
("Out Of The Deep") — Walter De La Mare

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. — Walter De La Mare

God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise. — Walter De La Mare

Three jolly huntsmen, In coats of red, Rode their horses Up to bed. — Walter De La Mare

Dobbin at manger pulls his hay: Gone is another summer's day. — Walter De La Mare

Is there anybody there? said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door. — Walter De La Mare

Marvellous happy it was to be
Alone, and yet not solitary.
O out of terror and dark, to come
In sight of home. — Walter De La Mare

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. — Walter De La Mare

Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour — Walter De La Mare

Who said, 'All Time's delight
Hath she for narrow bed;
Life's troubled bubble broken'?
That's what I said. — Walter De La Mare

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. — Walter De La Mare

When indeed you positively press your face, so to speak, against the crystalline window of your eyes, your mind is apt to become a perfect vacuum.
("Out Of The Deep") — Walter De La Mare

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") — Walter De La Mare

Away

There is no sorrow
Time heals never;
No loss, betrayal,
Beyond repair.
Balm for the soul, then,
Though grave shall sever
Lover from loved
And all they share.
See the sweet sun shines
The shower is over;
Flowers preen their beauty,
The day how fair!
Brood not too closely
On love, on duty;
Friends long forgotten
May wait you where
Life with death
Brings all to an issue;
None will long mourn for you,
Pray for you, miss you,
Your place left vacant,
You not there. — Walter De La Mare

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. — Walter De La Mare

Lawford had soundlessly stolen a pace or two nearer, and by stopping forward he could, each in turn, scrutinize the little intent company sitting over his story around the lamp at the further end of the table; squatting like little children with their twigs and pins, fishing for wonders on the brink of the unknown. — Walter De La Mare

Let them enjoy their Eden while they can; though there's plenty of apples, I fear, on the tree yet, Mr Lawford. — Walter De La Mare

Yes, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the dark. — Walter De La Mare

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") — Walter De La Mare

When I lie where shades of darkness Shall no more assail mine eyes. — Walter De La Mare

What a haunting, inescapable riddle life was. — Walter De La Mare

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

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

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

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. — Walter De La Mare

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

The first of these houses appeared to be occupied. The next two were vacant. Dingy curtains, soot-grey against their snowy window-sills, hung over the next. A litter of paper and refuse-abandoned by the last long gust of wind that must have come whistling round the nearer angle of the house - lay under the broken flight of steps up to a mid-Victorian porch. The small snow clinging to the bricks and to the worn and weathered cement of the wall only added to its gaunt lifelessness. (Bad Company — Walter De La Mare

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") — Walter De La Mare

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

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. — Walter De La Mare

I know well that only the rarest kind of best can be good enough for the young. — Walter De La Mare

We wake and whisper awhile, But, the day gone by, Silence and sleep like fields Of amaranth lie. — Walter De La Mare

After all, what is man but a hoard of ghosts? Oaks, that were acorns, that were oaks ... — Walter De La Mare

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. — Walter De La Mare

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

What is the world, O soldiers? It is I, I, this incessant snow, This northern sky. — Walter De La Mare

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

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. — Walter De La Mare

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. — Walter De La Mare