Jump to content

Collected poems, 1901-1918 (Vol. 2)/Sleeping Beauty

From Wikisource
Collected poems, 1901-1918 (1920)
by Walter de la Mare
Sleeping Beauty
2912995Collected poems, 1901-1918 — Sleeping Beauty1920Walter de la Mare
For works with similar titles, see Sleeping Beauty.

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 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.

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1956, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 67 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse