Poetry Walter de la Mare

  

Walter de la Mare

1873-1956

Walter de la Mare was born in Kent of well-to-do parents. At the age of sixteen he began to work for an oil company, where he worked for twenty years. In his mid-twenties he began to contribute poems and stories to various magazines. He is chiefly remembered as a poet, for both adults and children and in his favourite themes of childhood, fantasy and the strongly religious, commonplace objects and events are cloaked in mystery. He was awarded the Companion of Honour (CH) in 1948 and the Order of Merit (OM) in 1953. He is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London.

If I Were Lord of Tartary

Tartary is an imaginary land in Asia; the poet uses it as another name for the ‘Land of Dreams’.

If I were Lord of Tartary,

Myself and me alone,

My bed should be of ivory,

Of beaten gold my throne;

And in my court should peacocks flaunt,

And in my forests tigers haunt,

And in my pools great fishes slant

Their Sie athwart the sun.

If I were Lord of Tartary.

Trumpeters every day

To all mv meals should summon me,

And in my courtyard bray;

And in the evening lamps should shine,

Yellow as honey, red as wine,

While harp, and flute, and mandoline

Made music sweet and gay.

 

If I were Lord of Tartary,

I'd wear a robe of beads,

White, and gold, and green they'd be—

And clustered thick as seeds;

And ere should wane the morning star,

I'd don my robe and scimitar,

And zebras seven should draw my car

Through Tartary’s dark glades.

 

Lord of the fruits of Tartary,

Her rivers silver-pale! j

Lord of the hills of Tartary,

Glen, thicket, wood, and dale!

Her flashing stars, her scented breeze,

Her trembling lakes, like foamless seas,

Her bird-delighting citron-trees,

In every purple vale!