This is a poem that our teacher put on the wall above her desk when I was in the third grade. On a large sheet of poster paper, written in huge square and readable letters, Silver sort-of watched over us most of the year. And not counting rudiments like The A-B -C Song, or nursery rhymes, this was the first “real” poem I memorized as a child.
I’ve carried the poet’s name – Walter de la Mare – with me all these years, I’ve read his oeuvre, and none of it has the same effect on me as this simple little poem about what the night time looks like. The words linger in my heart the same as Sandburg’s poem about Chicago and the fog “…walking in on cat’s feet.”
During the day – when we are awake – we fill the air around us with one type of prayer or another. Even the unexpected “Jesus!!” during a quick maneuver in traffic, or spilling a bit of food on our sweater. But at night: oh yes! we sleep and rest as much as there is sleep and rest to be had, and it would seem that the prayers walk around us like angels, like the moonlight in this poem.
The prayers see us.
Angels see us.
God sees us
Theirs is the vigil , then. At night, when our prayers fall away to silence and sleep, this must be what happens around us.
Keep the faith!
Silver
by Walter de la Mare
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 silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
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