Songs Of Childhood-04 by Walter de la Mare

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
The scent of bramble sweets the air,
Amid her folded sheets she lies,
The gold of evening in her hair,
The blue of morn shut in her eyes.
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 wind, in flood,
She sleeps in lovely loneliness,
Half folded like an April bud
On winter-haunted trees.

THE HORN
Hark! is that a horn I hear,
In cloudland winding sweet—
And bell-like clash of bridle-rein,
And silver-shod light feet?
Is it the elfin laughter of
Fairies riding faint and high,
‘Neath the branches of the moon,
Straying through the starry sky?
Is it in the globèd dew
Such sweet melodies may fall?
Wood and valley—all are still,
Hushed the shepherd’s call.
Hark! is that a horn I hear
In cloudland winding sweet?
Or gloomy goblins marching out
Their captain Puck to greet?

CAPTAIN LEAN
Out of the East a hurricane
Swept down on Captain Lean—
That mariner and gentleman
Will ne’er again be seen.
He sailed his ship against the foes
Of his own country dear,
But now in the trough of the billows
An aimless course doth steer.
Powder was violets to his nostril,
Sweet the din of the fighting-line,
Now he is flotsam on the seas,
And his bones are bleached with brine.
The stars move up along the sky,
The moon she shines so bright,
And in that solitude the foam
Sparkles unearthly white.
This is the tomb of Captain Lean,
Would a straiter please his soul? I trow he sleeps in peace,
Howsoever the billows roll!

THE PORTRAIT OF A WARRIOR
His brow is seamed with line and scar;
His cheek is red and dark as wine;
The fires as of a Northern star
Beneath his cap of sable shine.
His right hand, bared of leathern glove,
Hangs open like an iron gin,
You stoop to see his pulses move,
To hear the blood sweep out and in.
He looks some king, so solitary
In earnest thought he seems to stand,
As if across a lonely sea
He gazed impatient of the land.
Out of the noisy centuries
The foolish and the fearful fade;
Yet burn unquenched these warrior eyes,
Time hath not dimmed nor death dismayed.

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Read these beautiful poems and rhymes for kids. List of the poems included in this poem eBook:

1. The Sleeping Beauty
2. The Horn
3. Captain Lean
4. The Portrait Of A Warrior
5. Haunted
6. The Raven’s Tomb
7. The Christening
8. The Mother Bird
9. The Child In The Story Goes To Bed
10. The Child In The Story Awakes
11. The Lamplighter
12. Cecil
13. I met At Eve
14. Lullaby
15. Envoy

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