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Lady Ottoline Morrell was a prominent cultural hostess and patron of the arts who photographed intimate portraits of the writers in her circle, including several of Walter de la Mare. This photograph was taken in June 1934.

Composer Herbert Howells was only a teenager when he met Walter de la Mare in 1910; they went on to enjoy almost 50 years of friendship and artistic collaboration until the poet’s death. Howells set a number of de la Mare’s poems to music, but “was prouder to have written King David than almost anything else of mine,” while de la Mare found it “so perfect that he did not want anyone else to set it.” It would later feature as the twelfth and final song in a cycle Howells composed to honor de la Mare after his death, A Garland for de la Mare.

King David was a sorrowful man:
No cause for his sorrow had he;
And he called for the music of a hundred harps,
To ease his melancholy.

They played till they all fell silent:
Played—and play sweet did they;
But the sorrow that haunted the heart of King David
They could not charm away.

He rose; and in his garden
Walked by the moon alone,
A nightingale hidden in a cypress-tree
Jargoned on and on.

King David lifted his sad eyes
Into the dark-boughed tree—
''Tell me, thou little bird that singest,
Who taught my grief to thee?'

But the bird in no wise heeded
And the king in the cool of the moon
Hearkened to the nightingale's sorrowfulness,
Till all his own was gone.

(from Peacock Pie, 1913)

In the Penguin Book of English Song, Richard Stokes claimed that there have been more settings of de la Mare’s poems than of any other English poet. Paxton’s research would seem to definitively confirm this.

“Adèle Paxton’s exhaustive researches into solo song settings of poems by Walter de la Mare over the past five years have led her to an astonishing conclusion. It is that there are about 800 different musical settings of his work of this kind, a number which is continuing to grow. She has found that over 260 composers have set some 300 different poems and other works. It is a tally that scarcely more than a handful of English poets from any period can rival.”

One composer who worked closely with de la Mare, Herbert Howells, wrote, “I’ve always enjoyed talking music to de la Mare; he was one of the few poets I’ve known who really understands music—one always felt he was on one’s wavelength, for instance his concept of ‘rhythm’ was identical with one’s own.”

(This is a silly little poem from Peacock Pie, but the first/ last line stuck with me from the first reading, and I would teasingly recite it to my brothers when they were in a bored mood. Right now I’m puzzled by the capitalization difference in the first and last lines… This is how it appears in the 1961 edition illustrated by Barbara Cooney; if someone has a different edition, I would appreciate a comparison!)

Poor Tired Tim! It’s sad for him.
He lags the long bright morning through,
Ever so tired of nothing to do;
He moons and mopes the livelong day,
Nothing to think about, nothing to say;
Up to bed with his candle to creep,
Too tired to yawn, too tired to sleep:
Poor tired Tim! It’s sad for him.

Poem by Walter de la Mare (from Peacock Pie, 1913). Illustration by Barbara Cooney (1961).

Is this a response to “The Listeners”?

Taken from Collected Poems, 1942.

Mine is small but beloved. I have a first edition of The Crossings on its way, and then I need to stop spending money on books for awhile. 😅

Poem by Walter de la Mare and illustration by Harold Jones, as they appear in the collection This Year: Next Year (1937).

Yesterday I added this beautiful book to my Walter de la Mare collection. 😍 What’s in yours?

Lady Ottoline Morrell was a prominent cultural hostess and patron of the arts who photographed intimate portraits of the writers in her circle, including several of Walter de la Mare.

(The woman behind de la Mare is Lady Morrell’s daughter Julian Vinogradoff.)

I’m excited for this to come to me by the end of this week or the beginning of the following week.

Poem by Walter de la Mare (from The Fleeting and Other Poems, 1933). Photograph of our spoiled pet snail Fred munching on grated carrots.

This book arrived today in the mail! Has anyone else read this one? The lengthy annotations by William Wooten are the closest thing I could find to a published biography.

(Illustration is “I Heard the Fairies in a Ring” by Dorothy P. Lathrop from Down-Adown-Derry, 1922)

I heard along the early hills,
Ere yet the lark was risen up,
Ere yet the dawn with firelight fills
The night-dew of the bramble-cup,—
I heard the fairies in a ring
Sing as they tripped a lilting round
Soft as the moon on wavering wing.
The starlight shook as if with sound,
As if with echoing, and the stars
Prankt their bright eyes with trembling gleams
While red with war the gusty Mars
Rained upon earth his ruddy beams.
He shone alone, low down the West,
While I, behind a hawthorn-bush,
Watched on the fairies flaxen-tressed
The fires of the morning flush.
Till, as a mist, their beauty died,
Their singing shrill and fainter grew;
And daylight tremulous and wide
Flooded the moorland through and through;
Till Urdon’s copper weathercock
Was reared in golden flame afar,
And dim from moonlit dreams awoke
The towers and groves of Arroar.

In drowsy fit
I hear the flames
Syllabling o’er
Their ancient names:
The coals—a glory
Of gold—blaze on,
Drenched with the suns
Of centuries gone;
While, at the window,
This rainy day
In darkening twilight
Dies away.

(from Bells and Grass, 1941)

Walter de la Mare’s only play was Crossings: A Fairy Play, written in 1919 for a student production at Wick School, Hove. The songs were set to music composed by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, who had initially approached de la Mare about writing the play.

“Under the terms of a will, the Wildersham children have to relocate from the family house in the city to ‘Crossings’ in the country, and to spend the first fortnight alone fending for themselves in the house. The children encounter interesting country neighbors, including ghosts and fairies. Or are they dreaming?”

The voice and piano score for “Ann’s Cradle Song” can be seen here.

Now silent falls the clacking mill;
Sweet-sweeter smells the briar;
The dew wells big on bud and twig;
The glow-worm's wrapt in fire.

Then sing, lully, lullay, with me,
And softly, lill-lall-lo, love,
'Tis high time, and wild time,
And no time, no, love!

Cries in the brake, bells in the sea:
The moon o'er moor and mountain
Cruddles her light from height to height,
Bedazzles pool and fountain.
Leap, fox; hoot, owl; wail, warbler sweet:
'Tis midnight now's a-brewing;
The fairy mob is all abroad,
And witches at their wooing—

Then sing, lully, lullay, with me,
And softly, lill-lall-lo, love,
'Tis high time, and wild time,
And no time, no, love.

A favorite poet and a favorite artist together… 😍

Poem by Walter de la Mare (from Peacock Pie, 1913). Illustration by Barbara Cooney (1961).

Story by Walter de la Mare (from Riddle and Other Stories, 1924)

So these seven children, Ann, and Matilda, James, William and Henry, Harriet and Dorothea, came to live with their grandmother. The house in which their grandmother had lived since her childhood was built in the time of the Georges. It was not a pretty house, but roomy, substantial, and square; and an elm-tree outstretched its branches almost to the windows.

When the children were come out of the cab (five sitting inside and two beside the driver), they were shown into their grandmother's presence. They stood in a little black group before the old lady, seated in her bow-window. And she asked them each their names, and repeated each name in her kind, quavering voice. Then to one she gave a work-box, to William a jack-knife, to Dorothea a painted ball ; to each a present according to age. And she kissed all her grand-children to the youngest.

“My dears," she said, "I wish to see all of you bright and gay in my house. I am an old woman, so that I cannot romp with you; but Ann must look to you, and Mrs. Fenn too. And every morning and every evening you must all come in to see your granny; and bring me smiling faces, that call back to my mind my own son Harry. But all the rest of the day, when school is done, you shall do just as you please, my dears. And there is only one thing, just one, I would have you remember. In the large spare bedroom that looks out on the slate roof there stands in the corner an old oak chest; aye, older than I, my dears, a great deal older; older than my grandmother. Play anywhere else in the house, but not there." She spoke kindly to them all, smiling at them; but she was very aged, and her eyes seemed to see nothing of this world.

And the seven children, though at first they were gloomy and strange, soon began to be happy and at home in the great house. There was much to interest and to amuse them there; all was new to them. Twice every day, morning and evening, they came in to see their grandmother, who every day seemed more feeble; and she spoke pleasantly to them of her mother, and her childhood, but never forgetting to visit her store of sugar-plums. And so the weeks passed by.

It was evening twilight when Henry went upstairs from the nursery by himself to look at the oak chest. He pressed his fingers into the carved fruit and flowers, and spoke to the dark-smiling heads at the corners; and then, with a glance over his shoulder, he opened the lid and looked in. But the chest concealed no treasure, neither gold nor baubles, nor was there anything to alarm the eye. The chest was empty, except that it was lined with silk of old-rose, seeming darker in the dusk, and smelling sweet of pot-pourri. And while Henry was looking in, he heard the softened laughter and the clinking of the cups downstairs in the nursery; and out at the window he saw the day darkening. These things brought strangely to his memory his mother who in her glimmering white dress used to read to him in the dusk; and he climbed into the chest; and the lid closed gently down over him.

When the other six children were tired with their playing, they filed into their grandmother's room as usual for her good-night and her sugar-plums. She looked out between the candles at them as if she were unsure of something in her thoughts. The next
day Ann told her grandmother that Henry was not anywhere to be found.

“Dearie me, child. Then he must be gone away
for a time,” said the old lady. She paused. "But remember all of you, do not meddle with the oak chest."

But Matilda could not forget her brother Henry, finding no pleasure in playing without him. So she would loiter in the house thinking where he might be. And she carried her wood doll in her bare arms, singing under her breath all she could make up about him. And when in a bright morning she peeped in on the chest, so sweet-scented and secret it seemed that she took her doll with her into it—just as Henry himself had done.

So Ann, and James, and William, Harriet and Dorothea were left at home to play together. "Some day maybe they will come back to you, my dears," said their grandmother, "or maybe you will go to them. Heed my warning as best you may."

Now Harriet and William were friends together, pretending to be sweethearts; while James and Dorothea liked wild games of hunting, and fishing, and battles. On a silent afternoon in October Harriet and William were talking softly together, looking out over the slate roof at the green fields, and they heard the squeak and frisking of a mouse behind them in the room. They went together and searched for the small, dark hole from whence it had come out. But finding no hole, they began to finger the carving of the chest, and to give names to the dark-smiling heads, just as Henry had done. "I know! let's pretend you are Sleeping Beauty, Harriet," said William, "and I'll be the Prince that squeezes through the thorns and comes in." Harriet looked gently and strangely at her brother; but she got into the box and lay down, pretending to be fast asleep; and on tiptoe William leaned over, and seeing how big was the chest he stepped in to kiss the Sleeping Beauty and to wake her from her quiet sleep. Slowly the carved lid turned on its noiseless hinges. And only the clatter of James and Dorothea came in sometimes to recall Ann from her book.

But their old grandmother was very feeble, and her sight dim, and her hearing extremely difficult.

Snow was falling through the still air upon the roof; and Dorothea was a fish in the oak chest, and James stood over the hole in the ice, brandishing a walking-stick for a harpoon, pretending to be an Esquimaux. Dorothea's face was red, and her wild eyes sparkled through her tousled hair. And James had a crooked scratch upon his cheek. "You must struggle, Dorothea, and then I shall swim back and drag you out. Be quick now!" He shouted with laughter as he was drawn into the open chest. And the lid closed softly and gently down as before.

Ann, left to herself, was too old to care overmuch for sugar-plums, but she would go solitary to bid her grandmother good-night; and the old lady looked wistfully at her over her spectacles. "Well, my dear," she said with trembling head; and she squeezed Ann's fingers between her own knuckled finger and thumb. "What lonely old people, we are, to be sure!" Ann kissed her grandmother's soft, loose cheek. She left the old lady sitting in her easy chair, her hands upon her knees, and her head turned sidelong towards her.

When Ann was gone to bed she used to sit reading her book by candlelight. She drew up her knees under the sheets, resting her book upon them. Her story was about fairies and gnomes, and the gently-flowing moonlight of the narrative seemed to illumine the white pages, and she could hear in fancy fairy voices, so silent was the great many-roomed house, and so mellifluent were the words of the story. Presently, she put out her candle, and, with a confused babel of voices close to her ear, and faint swift pictures before her eyes, she fell asleep.

And in the dead of night she arose out of bed in dream, and with eyes wide open yet seeing nothing of reality, moved silently through the vacant house. Past the room where her grandmother was snoring in brief, heavy slumber, she stepped light and surely, and down the wide staircase. And Vega the far-shining* stood over against the window above the slate roof. Ann walked in the strange room as if she were being guided by the hand towards the oak chest. There, just as if she was dreaming it was her bed, she laid herself down in the old rose silk, in the fragrant place. But it was so dark in the room that the movement of the lid was indistinguishable.

*”Vega, the far-shining”: Vega is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Lyra. It is the fifth-brightest star in the night sky.

Through the long day, the grandmother sat in her bow-window. Her lips were pursed, and she looked with dim, inquisitive scrutiny upon the street where people passed to and fro, and vehicles rolled by. At evening she climbed the stair and stood in the doorway of the large spare bedroom. The ascent had shortened her breath. Her magnifying spectacles rested upon her nose. Leaning her hand on the doorpost she peered in towards the glimmering square of window in the quiet gloom. But she could not see far, because her sight was dim and the light of day feeble. Nor could she detect the faint fragrance, as of autumnal leaves. But in her mind was a tangled skein of memories—laughter and tears, and little children now old-fashioned, and the advent of friends, and long farewells. And gossiping fitfully, inarticulately, with herself, the old lady went down
again to her window-seat.

Does anyone have a favorite poem(s) from Walter De La Mare’s collection of verse from 1933 titled The Fleeting & other Poems? Let me know your opinions on what poems standout to you. I know these poems are not the poems from his highly regarded The Listeners and other Poems from 1912. I like poems that have ambiguity and that are also haunting.