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Walter de la Mare's "Silver" · The Daily Poem

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, August 7th, 2026.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Walter de la Mer.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's called Silver.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Silver.
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  SPEAKER_00: Slowly, silently, now the moon walks the night in her silver shoon.
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  SPEAKER_00: This way and that she peers and sees silver fruit upon silver trees.
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  SPEAKER_00: One by one the casemans catcher beams beneath the silvery thatch,
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  SPEAKER_00: Couched in his kennel like a log with paws of silver, sleeps the dog.
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  SPEAKER_00: From their shadowy coat the white breasts peep of doves in silver-feathered sleep.
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  SPEAKER_00: A harvest mouse goes scampering by with silver claws and silver eye,
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  SPEAKER_00: And moveless fish in the water gleam by silver reeds in a silver stream.
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  SPEAKER_00: There is certainly a simplicity to the beauty of this poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: It has little agenda beyond giving us a picture of a world bathed in moonlight.
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  SPEAKER_00: And after having decided upon that goal, De La Mer accomplishes it admirably.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what makes this poem so clever and lifts it beyond a mere description
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  SPEAKER_00: of nighttime phenomena is the way in which the identity of many
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  SPEAKER_00: of these objects is slow-rolled,
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  SPEAKER_00: The beams of the moon,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe the clouds are moving,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe the moon is rising,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the beams of moonlight fall upon some of these objects
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  SPEAKER_00: and creatures progressively.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the fruit that catches the light before the trees come into view.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is the paws of the dog that we're given before the dog is named.
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  SPEAKER_00: The same with the doves.
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  SPEAKER_00: First we get the shadowy coat,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then their white breasts as some part of them catches the moonlight.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then finally in the next line, they're identified as doves.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even the fish are lit up and illuminated before the The surrounding context of
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  SPEAKER_00: a stream is given to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Delamere does very little except reverse some syntax here.
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  SPEAKER_00: Take subjects of sentences and put them at the end instead of at the beginning.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden we have this amazing effect of Where what our mind catches
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  SPEAKER_00: on first as we read this poem is perhaps exactly what our eyes would catch on first.
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  SPEAKER_00: The things that are most reflective,
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  SPEAKER_00: the things that would be most illuminated and most stand out in
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  SPEAKER_00: a bright moonlit night.
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  SPEAKER_00: All these urgent objects that are more likely to catch and reflect the beams of the moon.
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  SPEAKER_00: And even the moon herself is slightly personified and it is her own looking
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  SPEAKER_00: upon these things that causes them to appear in In her color,
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  SPEAKER_00: giving this whole moment a very magical fairyland-like quality,
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  SPEAKER_00: making you want to live in this poem for a minute.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here it is, one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Slowly, silently now, the moon walks the night in her silver shoon.
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  SPEAKER_00: This way and that she peers and sees silver fruit upon silver trees.
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  SPEAKER_00: One by one the casements catch her beams beneath the silvery thatch.
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  SPEAKER_00: Couched in his kennel like a log with paws of silver sleeps the dog.
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  SPEAKER_00: From their shadowy coat the white breasts peep of doves in silver feathered sleep.
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  SPEAKER_00: A harvest mouse goes scampering by with silver claws and silver eye
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  SPEAKER_00: and moveless fish in the water gleam by silver reeds in a silver stream.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week with more poetry for you.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime,
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  SPEAKER_00: you are always welcome to visit us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen
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  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially our engineer Logan Green,
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  SPEAKER_00: who makes this all sound like we didn't record it in a tin can with
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  SPEAKER_00: a string attached, I'm Sean Johnson, wishing you happy reading.