Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) worked for a number of years in the statistics department of Standard Oil before receiving a pension which freed him to devote his time to writing.
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The English writer Walter de la Mare (1873–1956), born at Greenwich and educated at St. Paul’s Cathedral School at London, worked for a number of years in the statistics department of Standard Oil before receiving a pension which freed him to devote his time to writing. While his writing for children remains enduringly popular, de la Mare was also the author of such psychological horror stories as “All Hallows.” Even his children’s poems, for that matter, beguile by way of an otherworldly eeriness which intrudes even on instances of beauty and peace. “Dream Song,” for example, reads as a lullaby, with its rocking tetrameter and dimeter lines. The first stanza evokes the usual go-to-sleep images of fading light, owl-calls, dewfall, and the softness of twilit woods, but from that point proceeds into more unsettling territory. Still, although the dream-road leads through dangers, at the poem’s close the dreaming child marvels and smiles at this “world of wonders.”
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