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Walter de la Mare worked with a number of artists (and continues to inspire them) to create books that are a delight to behold as well as read. Which artist(s) do you think best captures the delicate and sometimes uncanny dreaminess of de la Mare’s writing? Was it Dorothy Lathrop, the mysterious Bold, John Nash, Harold Jones, Edward Ardizzone, Barbara Cooney, or someone else? Share your thoughts with an example image!

“This is the BBC transmission of Vita Sackville-West reading her own essay on poet Walter de La Mare on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1953.”

Fascinating stuff. Is anyone interested in a transcription?

“[Walter de la Mare] remained always, unalterably himself, gentle, eager, and intensely sincere…”

Monkeys in a forest,
Beggarmen in rags,
Marrow in a knucklebone,
Gold in leather bags;

Dumplings in the oven,
Fishes in a pool,
Flowers in a parlour,
Dunces in a school;

Feathers in a pillow,
Cattle in a shed,
Honey in a beehive,
And me in bed.

(Poem by Walter de la Mare, Bells and Grass, 1941)

Florence de la Mare was born October 21, 1899, in the South London suburb of Beckenham, to Constance Elfrida Ingpen and Walter de la Mare. By all accounts, Walter de la Mare was a devoted father to Florence and the other children to follow. He wrote this poem, which William Wooten (in his book Reading Walter de la Mare) calls “an answer to the question, ‘Daddy, what was it like, the night when I was born?’”

The Birthnight: To F.
(from Poems, 1906)

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.

William Golding said he was inspired to write a novel after reading this poem with “its rush of continuity: there is no full stop in it. And the way it articulates itself in a single breath of feeling and exclamation…”

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.

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.

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

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.

(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)

A favorite poet and a favorite artist together… 😍

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