Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.
Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen—and kissed me there.
by Walter de la Mare 1873-1956
Written in 1913
Walter de la Mare was one of the most popular English poets of the first half of the twentieth century. His verse has a distinctive lyrical voice, sentimental without cloying; Vita Sackville-West once called him a "poet of dusk" and much of his work has a yearning quality for things lost and now unattainable.
One of his most famous works is The Traveller : In it a supernatural presence haunts the solitary Traveller : "Is there anybody there? said the Traveller, / Knocking on the moonlit door; / And his horse in the silence champed the grasses / Of the forest's ferny floor.... / But no one descended to the Traveller; / No head from the leaf-fringed sill / Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, / Where he stood perplexed and still."
De la Mare also wrote a number of books of poetry for school children including PEACOCK PIE: A BOOK OF RHYMES (1913) and BROOMSTICKS AND OTHER TALES (1925) and thousands of school children were introduced to his work through these. He was born in Kent in 1873 and died in Twickenham in 1956 and is buried in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Images
On the Web
