Second Reading of Walter De la Mare's 'Silver' (Slowly, silently, now the moon)

Walter De la Mare's 'Silver'   describes the beauty of a moonlit night and the effect of the moonlight on the earth. The poet has sketched a number of different pictures of the moonlight scene through extended metaphors. But as we know De la Mare's writings have an eerie, fantastic quality, which serves as a means of entry into a world of deeper reality, his perceptions in 'Silver' endow   with charm and candor . Read More Poetry

The moon is here merely not a physical form, lifeless, moving around earth.  Moon   is a Personification of a muse. The silver moon turns everything into mystic beauty. The light of the moon falls on different objects and things and turns them into silver. The repetition of the word  'Silver' in the poem creates a vivid picture before our eyes of silvery moonlight.  

 In the beginning the poet gives a human personality to the poem, He pictures the moon as a young lady who walks in the silvery shoes that turn everything into silver. Read More Poetry With this personification in mind the poet goes on to describe the onward journey of the moon. It is a moonlit night. The silvery moonlight makes everything look silvery, as it goes up and up in the sky. The trees with their fruits, the windows under the thatched roofs, the paws of a dog fast asleep, the feathers of doves in their shady nests, the claws and eye of a harvest mouse and the reeds in a stream where a fish lies motionless—turn into silver in the light of the moon. The whole surrounding is transformed into a dreamland of beauty.

Now as the line goes  'Silver'  looks as a creation of one intense image or impression and notable for its compression and suggestiveness. Through a vivid but fleeting observation    'Silver'  evokes moody and emotive nature- the nocturnal one. Being truly Georgian the poem metaphorically tells the story of King Midas’s golden touch of his finger, rendering it lifeless. Have we no way to free ourselves from the enchantment! Read More Poetry the harvest mouse, however, escape this lot which obliquely suggests a relationship between Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, and her daughter, Persephone, as both the goddess of the dead and the goddess of the fertility of the earth. It suggests a mystic relationship between us and the nature.

There is paradise within outreach and the fairy land needs ours eyes open to see. Walter De la Mare is the laureate of the fairy land. The poem Silver describes the effect of the silvery moonlight on certain things which turn into silver. The picture of a calm and peaceful quiet landscape on a moonlit night is vivid and lifelike. The charm of the poem lies in its atmosphere built up with triumphant art. The peace and quiet of the scene is brought out most effectively in the following lines:

“And moveless fish in the water gleam By silver reeds in silver stream.”

The poet has repeatedly emphasized the idea of silence and the silvery moonlight throughout the poem. It is, in fact, a dream world where one walks on tiptoe. 'Silver' has the charm of simplicity which is the feature of Walter De la Mare’s poetry. It contains his characteristic touches of beautiful features of World of nature — the trees, the thatch, the dog sleeping unconsciously in his kennel, the doves, the mouse running briskly, and the unmoved  fish in the stream. The music of the language has a fairy quality about it. No one can fail to be struck by the mood correspondence between the theme of the poem and the brooding haunting rhythm of the lines. Read More Poetry Soft liquid sounds predominate and there is alliteration almost in every line. The poet makes very effective use of them and the total effect is musical. To read such a poem truly, receptively, is to yield oneself to an intense imaginative experience, to enter a world where all are made beautiful. Fluent and clear in expression the poem presents no difficulty to the understanding.

Ardhendu De