This is one of the first poems I ever remember learning, other than nursery rhymes, and I find it still has a certain charm, though it does come with mixed emotions. It was presented to us in an art lesson at primary school, and we were told to create our own painting based on the poem, which indeed cries out for illustration. Sadly, I could only watch as the boy next to me produced a rather fine effort while I suffered the agonies of the totally inartistic, who may have a perfectly clear vision of things in their heads but are quite unable to render this in any drawn or painted form. In retrospect I might perhaps have tried to pass off my smeary mess as being in the modernist vein, but I was innocent of such a possibility back then, so must endure the teacher’s head-shaking disapproval as she, recognising a lost cause when she saw one, passed silently by. But I still like the poem for the way it captures the gleaming utter stillness of the moonlit night.
For a note on Walter de la Mare see week 105.
Silver
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and a silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
Walter de la Mare
David Sutton 