Tag Archives: Walter de la Mare

Cold, yet all sweet.

May 1, 2026poetrybabies, childbirth, Walter de la MareGretchenJoanna

Among my family and friends we remember many May birthdays.
………………..I offer this poem in honor of them all.

THE BIRTHNIGHT

Dearest, it was a night
That in its darkness rocked Orion’s stars;
A sighing wind ran faintly white
Along the willows, and the cedar boughs
Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across
The starry silence of their antique moss:
No sound save rushing air
Cold, yet all sweet with Spring,
And in thy mother’s arms, couched weeping there,
Thou, lovely thing.

-Walter de la Mare

Through these sweet fields.

January 17, 2026nature, poetrynight, planets, stars, the heavens, Walter de la MareGretchenJoanna

When the flowers of earth have faded,
go outside at night and look up…

WANDERERS

Wide are the meadows of night
And daisies are shining there,
Tossing their lovely dews,
Lustrous and fair;
And through these sweet fields go,
Wanderers ‘mid the stars __
Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.

Tired in their silver, they move,
And circling, whisper and say,
Fair are the blossoming meads of delight
Through which we stray.

-Walter de la Mare

Dawn breathes, Spring is here!

December 25, 2025Christmas, Nativity, poetryWalter de la MareGretchenJoanna

“And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” -Luke 1:76-79

BEFORE DAWN

DIM-BERRIED is the mistletoe
With globes of sheenless grey,
The holly mid ten thousand thorns
Smolders 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!

-Walter de la Mare

A face open as heaven.

November 28, 2025beauty, poetryhawthorn, kindness, Walter de la MareGretchenJoanna

RARITIES

Beauty, and grace, and wit are rare;
And even intelligence:
But lovelier than hawthorn seen in May,
Or mistletoe berries on Innocent’s Day
The face that, open as heaven, doth wear —
With kindness for its sunshine there —
Good nature and good sense.

-Walter de la Mare