SONGS OF CHILDHOOD
I know well that only the rarest kind of best in anything can be good enough for the young.—Walter de la Mare
In the preface to Bells and Grass, his last volume of poems for children, Walter de la Mare reminisced of his first—Songs of Childhood, published under the pseudonym Walter Ramal.
Despite its initially lukewarm reception, the book was clothed for de la Mare by that aura belonging to all first things. ‘Fist snowdrop of the year, first primrose, first cuckoo-call and returning sparrows, first memories, first love—all such firsts may carry with them a thrill of delight or edge of sweetness, and perhaps even a magic, of their own.’
De la Mare continues: ‘There is a peculiar joy in seeing what has been all but a secret source of pleasure out in the open, so to speak... Charming—with its pale-blue cloth, parchment spine, gilded Longman Ship, and Dickie Doyle frontispiece... There it actually was, in print.’
Like old faerie-lore and nursery-rhyme, the tone of Songs is often dark, darker than that of Bells and Grass. Many of the poems are cautionary ballads about children who did not heed the warnings of others and are wiled away by the enchantments of faeries.
The power of maternal love to counter such evil forces is shown in the poem ‘The Goblin.’ A goblin enters a cottage with the intent to eat two little children, but slinks away defeated when he hears the mother singing a lullaby of Christ’s protection.
While there are poems about false faeries, wily peddlers and hungry wolves, a few of the poems have a more jaunty tenor, including the often anthologized ‘Bunches of Grapes.’
Here are four of my favorite poems from Songs of Childhood. {I read the edition by Granger Book Co., charmingly illustrated by Estella Canziani.}
{SLEEPYHEAD}
As I lay awake in the white moonlight,
I heard a sweet singing in the wood,
‘Out of bed,
Sleepyhead,
Put your white foot now;
Here are we,
‘Neath the tree,
Singing round the foot now.’
I looked out of window, in the white moon-
light
The leaves were like snow in the wood—
‘Come away,
Child, and play
Light with the gnomies;
In a mound
Green and round–
That’s where their home is.
Honey-sweet
Curds to eat,
Cream and frumenty,
Shells and beads,
Poppy seeds,
You shall have plenty.’
But soon as I stooped in the dim moonlight
To put on my stocking and my shoe,
The sweet, sweet singing died sadly away,
And the light of the morning peeped through,
And instead of the gnomies there came a red
robin
To sing of the buttercups and dew.
{LOVELOCKS}
I watched the Lady Caroline
Bind up her beauteous hair.
Her face was rosy in the glass,
And, ‘twixt the coils, her hands would pass,
White in the candleshine.
Her bottles on the table lay,
Stoppered, yet sweet of violet;
Her image in the mirror stooped
To view those locks as lightly looped
As cherry boughs in May.
The snowy night lay dim without,
I heard the Waits their sweet song sing;
The window smouldered keen with frost;
Yet still she twisted, sleeked and tossed
Her beauteous hair about.
{BUNCHES OF GRAPES}
‘Bunches of grapes,’ says Timothy;
‘Pomegranates pink,’ says Elaine;
‘A junket of cream and a cranberry tart
For me,’ says Jane.
‘Love-in-a-mist,’ says Timothy;
‘Primroses pale,’ says Elaine;
‘A nosegay of pinks and mignonette
For me,’ says Jane.
‘Chariots of gold,’ says Timothy;
‘Silvery wings,’ says Elaine;
‘A bumpity ride in a wagon of hay
For me,’ says Jane.
{THE SLEEPING BEAUTY}
The scent of bramble fills the air,
Amid her folded sheets she lies,
The gold of evening in her hair,
The blue of morn shut in her eye.
How many a changing moon hath lit
The unchanging roses of her face!
Her mirror ever broods on it
In silver stillness of the days.
Oft flits the moth on filmy wings
Into his solitary lair;
Shrill evensong the cricket sings
From some still shadow in her hair.
In heat, in snow, in winds, in flood,
She sleeps in lovely loneliness,
Half-folded like an April bud
On winter-haunted trees.
• ‘Sweet Anne Maroon,’ an illustration by Dorothy P. Lathrop for ‘Down-a-Down-Derry’ in Songs of Childhood by Walter de la Mare •
October 15, 2013