Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE VEIL
and other
POEMS

By

WALTER DE LA MARE

New York

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1922

Copyright, 1922,

BY

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOTE

Seven of the poems included in this collection were written for Drawings by Miss Pamela Bianco, and were first published by Mr. Heinemann in a volume entitled Flora. The author's thanks are due to Mr. Sydney Pawling for permission to reprint these poems; to Mr. Cyril Beaumont for the use of 'Tidings' from a Play for Children, entitled Crossings; and, for permission to include several other poems, to the Editors of the London Mercury, the New Republic, the Spectator, the Nation, the Century Magazine, the Cambridge Magazine, the Literary Review, the Sphere, the New Statesman, the Bookman's Journal, the Broom, the Outlook, the Athenæum, and the Westminster Gazette.

CONTENTS

THE VEIL AND OTHER POEMS

THE IMP WITHIN

'ROUSE now, my dullard, and thy wits awake;

'Tis first of the morning. And I bid thee make—

No, not a vow; we have munched our fill of these

From crock of bone-dry crusts and mouse-gnawn cheese—

Nay, just one whisper in that long, long ear—

Awake; rejoice. Another Day is here:—

'A virgin wilderness, which, hour by hour,

Mere happy idleness shall bring to flower.

Barren and arid though its sands now seem,

Wherein oasis becks not, shines no stream,

Yet wake—and lo, 'tis lovelier than a dream.

'Plunge on, thy every footprint shall make fair

Its thirsty waste; and thy foregone despair

Undarken into sweet birds in the air,

Whose coursing wings and love-crazed summoning cries

Into infinity shall attract thine eyes.

'No...? Well, lest promise in performance faint,

A less inviting prospect will I paint.

I bid thee adjure thy Yesterday, and say:

"As thou wast, Enemy, so be To-day.—

Immure me in the same close narrow room;

Be hated toil the lamp to light its gloom;

Make stubborn my pen; sift dust into my ink;

Forbid mine eyes to see, my brain to think.

Scare off the words whereon the mind is set.

Make memory the power to forget.

Constrain imagination; bind its wing;

Forbid the unseen Enchantresses to sing.

Ay, do thy worst!"

'Vexed Spectre, prythee smile.

Even though that yesterday was bleak and sour,

Art thou a slave beneath its thong to cower?

Thou hast survived. And hither am I—again,

Kindling with mockery thy o'erlaboured brain.

Though scant the moments be wherein we meet,

Think, what dark months would even one make sweet.

'Thy quill? Thy paper? Ah, my dear, be true.

Come quick To-morrow. Until then, Adieu.'

THE OLD ANGLER

TWILIGHT leaned mirrored in a pool

Where willow boughs swept green and hoar,

Silk-clear the water, calm and cool,

Silent the weedy shore:

There in abstracted, brooding mood

One fishing sate. His painted float

Motionless as a planet stood;

Motionless his boat.

A melancholy soul was this,

With lantern jaw, gnarled hand, vague eye;

Huddled in pensive solitariness

He had fished existence by.

Empty his creel; stolen his bait—

Impassively he angled on,

Though mist now showed the evening late

And daylight well-nigh gone.

Suddenly, like a tongueless bell,

Downward his gaudy cork did glide;

A deep, low-gathering, gentle swell

Spread slowly far and wide.

Wheeped out his tackle from noiseless winch,

And furtive as a thief, his thumb,

With nerve intense, wound inch by inch

A line no longer numb.

What fabulous spoil could thus unplayed

Gape upward to a mortal air?—

He stoops engrossed; his tanned cheek greyed;

His heart stood still: for there,

Wondrously fairing, beneath the skin

Of secretly bubbling water seen,

Swims—not the silver of scale and fin—

But gold immixt with green.

Deeply astir in oozy bed,

The darkening mirror ripples and rocks:

And lo—a wan-pale, lovely head,

Hook tangled in its locks!

Cold from her haunt—a Naiad slim.

Shoulder and cheek gleamed ivory white;

Though now faint stars stood over him,

The hour hard on night.

Her green eyes gazed like one half-blind

In sudden radiance; her breast

Breathed the sweet air, while gently twined,

'Gainst the cold water pressed,

Her lean webbed hands. She floated there,

Light as a scentless petalled flower,

Water-drops dewing from her hair

In tinkling beadlike shower.

So circling sidelong, her tender throat

Uttered a grieving, desolate wail;

Shrill o'er the dark pool lapsed its note,

Piteous as nightingale.

Ceased Echo. And he?—a life's remorse

Welled to a tongue unapt to charm,

But never a word broke harsh and hoarse

To quiet her alarm.

With infinite stealth his twitching thumb

Tugged softly at the tautened gut,

Bubble-light, fair, her lips now dumb,

She moved, and struggled not;

But with set, wild, unearthly eyes

Pale-gleaming, fixed as if in fear,

She couched in the water, with quickening sighs,

And floated near.

In hollow heaven the stars were at play;

Wan glow-worms greened the pool-side grass;

Dipped the wide-bellied boat. His prey

Gazed on; nor breathed. Alas!—

Long sterile years had come and gone;

Youth, like a distant dream, was sped;

Heart, hope, and eyes had hungered on....

He turned a shaking head,

And clumsily groped amid the gold,

Sleek with night dews, of that tangling hair,

Till pricked his finger keen and cold

The barb imbedded there.

Teeth clenched, he drew his knife—'Snip, snip,'—

Groaned, and sate shivering back; and she,

Treading the water with birdlike dip,

Shook her sweet shoulders free:

Drew backward, smiling, infatuate fair,

His life's disasters in her eyes,

All longing and folly, grief, despair,

Daydreams and mysteries.

She stooped her brow; laid low her cheek,

And, steering on that silk-tressed craft,

Out from the listening, leaf-hung creek,

Tossed up her chin, and laughed—

A mocking, icy, inhuman note.

One instant flashed that crystal breast,

Leaned, and was gone. Dead-still the boat:

And the deep dark at rest.

Flits moth to flower. A water-rat

Noses the placid ripple. And lo!

Streams a lost meteor. Night is late,

And daybreak zephyrs flow....

And he—the cheated? Dusk till morn,

Insensate, even of hope forsook,

He muttering squats, aloof, forlorn,

Dangling a baitless hook.

THE WILLOW

LEANS now the fair willow, dreaming

Amid her locks of green.

In the driving snow she was parched and cold,

And in midnight hath been

Swept by blasts of the void night,

Lashed by the rains.

Now of that wintry dark and bleak

No memory remains.

In mute desire she sways softly;

Thrilling sap up-flows;

She praises God in her beauty and grace,

Whispers delight. And there flows

A delicate wind from the Southern seas,

Kissing her leaves. She sighs.

While the birds in her tresses make merry;

Burns the Sun in the skies.

TITMOUSE

IF you would happy company win,

Dangle a palm-nut from a tree,

Idly in green to sway and spin,

Its snow-pulped kernel for bait; and see,

A nimble titmouse enter in.

Out of earth's vast unknown of air,

Out of all summer, from wave to wave,

He'll perch, and prank his feathers fair,

Jangle a glass-clear wildering stave,

And take his commons there—

This tiny son of life; this spright,

By momentary Human sought,

Plume will his wing in the dappling light,

Clash timbrel shrill and gay—

And into time's enormous nought,

Sweet-fed, will flit away.

THE VEIL

I think and think; yet still I fail—

Why does this lady wear a veil?

Why thus elect to mask her face

Beneath that dainty web of lace?

The tip of a small nose I see,

And two red lips, set curiously

Like twin-born cherries on one stem,

And yet she has netted even them.

Her eyes, it's plain, survey with ease

Whatever to glance upon they please.

Yet, whether hazel, grey, or blue,

Or that even lovelier lilac hue,

I cannot guess: why—why deny

Such beauty to the passer-by?

Out of a bush a nightingale

May expound his song; beneath that veil

A happy mouth no doubt can make

English sound sweeter for its sake.

But then, why muffle in, like this,

What every blossomy wind would kiss?

Why in that little night disguise

A daybreak face, those starry eyes?

THE FAIRY IN WINTER

(For a drawing by Dorothy Puvis Lathrop)

THERE was a Fairy—flake of winter—

Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence,

Sister crystal to crystal sighing,

Making of meadow argent palace,

Night a star-sown solitude,

Cried 'neath her frozen eaves, 'I burn here!'

Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like,

Wand within fingers, locks enspangled,

Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,

She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow—

Green as stalks of weeds in water—

Breathed: stirred.

Rilled from her heart the ichor, coursing,

Flamed and awoke her slumbering magic.

Softlier than moth's her pinions trembled;

Out into blackness, light-like, she flittered,

Leaving her hollow cold, forsaken.

In air, o'er crystal, rang twangling night-wind.

Bare, rimed pine-woods murmured lament.

THE FLOWER

HORIZON to horizon, lies outspread

The tenting firmament of day and night;

Wherein are winds at play; and planets shed

Amid the stars their gentle gliding light.

The huge world's sun flames on the snow-capped hills;

Cindrous his heat burns in the sandy plain;

With myriad spume-bows roaring ocean swills

The cold profuse abundance of the rain.

And man—a transient object in this vast,

Sighs o'er a universe transcending thought,

Afflicted by vague bodings of the past,

Driven toward a future, unforeseen, unsought.

Yet, see him, stooping low to naked weed

That meeks its blossom in his anxious eye,

Mark how he grieves, as if his heart did bleed,

And wheels his wondrous features to the sky;

As if, transfigured by so small a grace,

He sought Companion in earth's dwelling-place.

BEFORE DAWN

DIM-BERRIED is the mistletoe

With globes of sheenless grey,

The holly mid ten thousand thorns

Smoulders its fires away;

And in the manger Jesu sleeps

This Christmas Day.

Bull unto bull with hollow throat

Makes echo every hill,

Cold sheep in pastures thick with snow

The air with bleatings fill;

While of his mother's heart this Babe

Takes His sweet will.

All flowers and butterflies lie hid,

The blackbird and the thrush

Pipe but a little as they flit

Restless from bush to bush;

Even to the robin Gabriel hath

Cried softly, 'Hush!'

Now night is astir with burning stars

In darkness of the snow;

Burdened with frankincense and myrrh

And gold the Strangers go

Into a dusk where one dim lamp

Burns faintly, Lo!

No snowdrop yet its small head nods,

In winds of winter drear;

No lark at casement in the sky

Sings matins shrill and clear;

Yet in this frozen mirk the Dawn

Breathes, Spring is here!

THE SPECTRE

IN cloudy quiet of the day,

While thrush and robin perched mute on spray,

A spectre by the window sat,

Brooding thereat.

He marked the greenness of the Spring,

Daffodil blowing, bird a-wing—

Yet dark the house the years had made

Within that Shade.

Blinded the rooms wherein no foot falls.

Faded the portraits on the walls.

Reverberating, shakes the air

A river there.

Coursing in flood, its infinite roars;