A Song of Enchantment

A song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green—green wood, by waters fair, 
Just as the words came up to me 
I sang it under the wild wood tree.

Widdershins turned I, singing it low, 
Watching the wild birds come and go; 
No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen 
Under the thick-thatched branches green.

Twilight came: silence came: 
The planet of Evening’s silver flame; 
By darkening paths I wandered through 
Thickets trembling with drops of dew.

But the music is lost and the words are gone 
Of the song I sang as I sat alone, 
Ages and ages have fallen on me— 
On the wood and the pool and the elder tree.

Credit

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 13, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“A Song of Enchantment” appears in Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes (Constable & Company, 1913) as part of a collection of eight songs. About de la Mare’s poetic relationship with the fantastic, literary critic Henry Charles Duffin writes in his book Walter de la Mare: A Study of His Poetry (Haskell House, 1919), “In very many of his poems, constituting probably more than half of his total output, de la Mare makes us aware of a life, a world, an experience, which are instantly recognized as not only different from anything the common day has to offer, but more real, partaking more of the eternal, in the same way as the mystic’s knowledge of God. And it is especially to be noted that de la Mare not only communicates to us the fact that he has had this mystical (or, if you like, quasi-mystical) experience, but enables us to enter upon it (or something parallel to it) ourselves: this he does through his supreme gift of poetic form, which promotes in the mind an awareness by which it participates in the poet’s comprehension of the utmost nature of things.”