The Listeners and Other Poems

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, storm, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
BY WALTER DE LA MARE
NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
The author's thanks for permission to reprint certain of the poems included in this collection are due to the Editors of the Saturday Review , the Thrush , the Pall Mall Magazine , the Odd Volume , the Lady's Realm , the English Review , the Westminster Gazette , the Commonwealth , and the Nation .


There were three cherry trees once, Grew in a garden all shady; And there for delight of so gladsome a sight, Walked a most beautiful lady, Dreamed a most beautiful lady.
Birds in those branches did sing, Blackbird and throstle and linnet, But she walking there was by far the most fair— Lovelier than all else within it, Blackbird and throstle and linnet.
But blossoms to berries do come, All hanging on stalks light and slender, And one long summer's day charmed that lady away, With vows sweet and merry and tender; A lover with voice low and tender.
Moss and lichen the green branches deck; Weeds nod in its paths green and shady: Yet a light footstep seems there to wander in dreams, The ghost of that beautiful lady, That happy and beautiful lady.

When Susan's work was done she'd sit, With one fat guttering candle lit, And window opened wide to win The sweet night air to enter in; There, with a thumb to keep her place She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face, Her mild eyes gliding very slow Across the letters to and fro, While wagged the guttering candle flame In the wind that through the window came. And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, 'You silly souls, to act this way!' And never a sound from night I'd hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great glasses bent on me She'd glance into reality; And shake her round old silvery head, With—'You!—I thought you was in bed!'— Only to tilt her book again, And rooted in Romance remain.