Come Hither

by Walter de la Mare

777 page light blue clothbound hardcover poetry book with gold spine lettering. Over 500 poems by 150 authors. Publisher-Alfred A. Knopf in 1957-3rd Edition.

Genres: Poetry, Childrens, Reference, Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Walter John de la Mare was an English poet, short story writer and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for his psychological horror short fiction, including "Seaton's Aunt" and "All Hallows". In 1921, his novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and his post-war Collected Stories for Children won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for British children's books.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book is a delightful invitation and I enjoyed the author's introduction titled, "The Story of This Book" on how he came to collect poetry. As he writes, "That is one of the pleasures of reading - you may make any picture out of words you can and will; and a poem may have as many different meanings as there are different minds."

My favorites are listed by their number in this book:

6. The Lark Now Leaves His Watery Nest by Sir William Davenant who is new to me. I think I will seek out more of his poetry.
12. Green Rain by Mary Webb. One of her books is already included on my To Read list.
33. On Easton Knoll by John Masefield. Masefield was born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, where my husband grew up.
94. The Lamb by William Blake. A favorite from my childhood.
99. The Tiger by William Blake. I was first enthralled by this poem when my English teacher read it out loud to our class in a dramatic tone.
130. Where the Bee Sucks by William Shakespeare. I love the whimsy and delightfully drowsy nature of this poem, which transported me to a summer meadow.
133. The Fairies by William Allingham. My Grampy would recite this with fervor from memory. The first lines are:
Up the airy mountain, Down the rushing glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men;
151. Leisure by William H. Davies. This one reminds us to take time to be still in the moment and enjoy the view.
404. Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Remembered from school days.
458. On a Quiet Conscience by Charles I.
463. Echo by Christina Rosetti:

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where sounds brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of really wonderful poems that Walter de la Mare (the famous poet and writer in his own right) collected and presents in thematic groupings/headings. Frankly, although the poems themselves are enchanting and wonderful (I love poetry, so I'm biased) and by multiple famous poets, I found the introduction that de la Mare wrote (about how he came to include the poems he did) as intriguing and magical as the poems themselves. This man can write! No one talks this way anymore, and that's a big shame. His powers of description are just captivating as he mentions visiting a mysterious house with its mysterious tenant often as a child, and becoming aware of an equally mysterious collection of poems that he learned to love there, motivating him later in life to create a collection of poems for "children of all ages" (the child inside each adult, too). Wonderful.

[Welwyn Wilton Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most fascinating books I've ever read. It isn't a story book, though the story in it is deeply powerful. It isn't a book of favourite poems, though the favourite poems are there and a remarkably eclectic lot they are, too. It isn't a book of footnotes, because they are not at the feet: very often they take up pages and pages. I think of this book as a quilt, very much like a quilt, with each section some part of Walter de la Mare, including the land he loved. If you can find it anywhere, buy it. You will never regret it.

Oh, and the date I finished reading it? I will never finish reading it. I will simply keep on going back to it, over and over again. It's a perfect book for a desert island. I adore it.

[Gina Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels a bit odd to rate a collection of poems such as this…there are good ones obviously, but overall I didn’t connect all that much with most of the poems de la Mare chose to include in this collection. There are quite a few written in Middle English also which can prove challenging. That said, the book starts with a story de la Mare wrote and that story alone is worth keeping this book for! Part of the “story” is really like a treatise on poetry and well worth reading and pondering.

Also, it should be noted, that there is a whole section in the back that has “notes” about the poems from earlier sections. It would have been helpful to realize that at the beginning so they could be read with their appropriate poems. As it was I simply skipped most of that section.

[Uri Cohen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was extremely disappointed by this book. (Admittedly, I think the introduction – about a child finding an awe-inspiring poetry collection – is worth reading. But that's all.) Three things bothered me:

1) It's ridiculously long. Not counting the indices, the book is over 900 pages! This is not every single poem ever written in English, but it feels like it. Really, de la Mare? You couldn't bear to include any fewer than 483 poems? And then you still felt compelled to shoehorn dozens more in the endnotes?!

2) It's not user-friendly at all. Many of the poems are in archaic English, and only scholars of the language will understand many of the words. While a couple of hundred words are defined at the end of the book, that's a tiny percentage. I imagine that the vast majority of readers will be frustrated by not understanding much of the book. I know I was.

Furthermore, in de la Mare's endnotes, he seems to assume that the readers are familiar with all of British literature and history. Here's an example:

[In 1611] Sir Walter Raleigh was 59, Anthony Munday 58, Samuel Daniel 49, Michael Drayton 48, Thomas Campion 44, Thomas Dekker (?) 41, John Donne and Ben Jonson were 38, John Fletcher was 32, Francis Beaumont 27, William Drummond 26, John Ford 25, William Browne and Robert Herrick 20, Francis Quarles 19, George Herbert 18, Thomas Carew (?) 16, James Shirley 15, and John Milton (and Sir John Suckling) were 2.

Some people seem to think this book is for children, but I guess they haven't actually read it.

3) This last problem is only about one poem, but it's still a problem. Poem #420, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter," is virulently antisemitic, a blood libel about Jews murdering a Christian child in Lincoln, England. Not only does de la Mare think this incitement to murder is worthy of inclusion, but his commentary implies that the blood libel might be true! "True or false, what a clear, pellucid picture the ballad builds up in the imagination..." In other words, art should be judged strictly on its artistic merits, and its contribution to the slaughter of innocents should be disregarded. That's not okay!

There are plenty of poetry collections. Don't bother with this one.

[Louise Steer · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother gave the 1960 Longman version with the mysterious blue cover to my sister, but I was the one who read it repeatedly cover to cover and became a poet myself. My sister still has that book so I acquired my own facsimile copy.

Walter de la Mare was a big deal when I was a child, his children's books (especially Silver) were magical and his adult novels intriguing, Diary of a Midget could have been truly awful but is a warmhearted book with a feisty heroine - so much so that Armistead Maupin wrote a homage of his own.

Back to Come Hither. It is stuffed full of English poems from about 500 years of poetry, some are wonderful, some less so, because they are all de la Mare's own idiosyncratic choices. The best parts of this huge book are the preface, where he tells a magical and allegorical story of a boy named Simon who finds a mysterious house called Thrae (an anagram for Earth) inhabited by the mysterious Miss Taroone (Moon and Stars) and her cook Linnet Sara Cueqc (Natural Science). Miss Taroone shows Simon the room of her son Nahum Tarune (Human Nature) who has gone off on his own wanderings. Simon reads Mr Nahum's books and develops his own love of poetry. The poems in this book are supposedly the poems Simon copied from Mr Nahum's own books. This is such a wonderful story about creativity and imagination. The final chapter is also wonderful, as it is simply random footnotes to various poems, including more poems, recipes, songs and random facts that de la Mare collected along the way.

We now live in a world of superheros and technology. Come Hither is the antithesis of our world, it is close to nature, full of shadows, and tells us that the world is full of mystery if we open ourselves to that possibility.

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume is only half of the book. I found the entire book on Open Library and plan to finish reading the rest of the poems as well.
This book is listed in Julia Eccleshare's 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, in the 5-years-old to 7-years-old category. And certainly, there are some nursery rhymes and some poems which these younger ones could understand and enjoy. However, a great many of the poems would be way over the heads of these younger children, and more suitable for older children, teens, and adults, especially the poems in the "War" section. Children in the U. S. especially may have trouble with many of the poems which were written before dictionaries standardized spelling, because many of the centuries-old poems feature non-standard spelling. Some of the poems by Scottish writers may also cause problems for children not familiar with that dialect. Fortunately, the author does include glossary footnotes for words (and some spellings) no longer used in modern English.
Overall, this is a excellent selection of classic and exceptional poems, mostly by English/Irish/Scottish writers, with a couple of Robert Frost poems thrown in. But there are other children's poetry books in which all of the poems are much more geared to children, such as The Random House Book of Poetry for Children.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Free Project Gutenberg | An everything-but-the-kitchen-sink collection, but the introduction is worth the book. | The allegory in the opening section is terrifically subtle (Nahum=Human, Tarune=Nature, Thrae=Earth, Sure Vine=the Universe, Ten Laps villages=the Planets, Miss Taroone=probably Mother Nature, and East Dene could be Destiny or Eden) but the writing of it catches the reader immediately. As for the poetry selected for the rest, I can see it being a good choice as The Book of poetry given to a child to grow with them through life. But there's everything in here from skipping rope rhymes to Beowulf, Shakespeare to Burns, Tennyson to Keats to Shelley to Christina Rosetti to Thomas the Rhymer. This is not for a single audience (many other editions give the title as "for the young of all ages" rather than "for children") as it's unlikely a child who enjoys chanting Bobby Shaftoe will get the same value from Annabel Lee. But a family with little space or funds for volumes of poetry, or a reader who doesn't yet know what they like, would find a lot of value here.

[Davidg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been a wonderful book to gradually work my way through. I remember the Puffin edition as a child but never looked at a copy. I wonder what difference it might have made if I had. The problem with the book is that much of the verse, and it is all verse, rhyming and everything, isn’t that good or inspiring. What is inspiring is de la Mere’s enthusiasm and his clear desire to interest his young readers. I loved the long footnotes at the back of each volume giving information or other poems on a similar theme. There is no talking down, just an expectation that his reader will understand.

I kept imagining a similar book today and what I might include and what I might put in the footnotes. I cannot imagine such a book being commissioned today, or any publisher being willing to issue one with 1000 pages. It would be brilliant to have one though.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

St Kilda Library - Classics collection.

1923 - poems selected for children a hundred years ago were not particularly fun or even interesting. Coleridge. Wordsworth. Shakespeare. Keats. Charles I (!)

A different time.

Tho I suspect this book sat unread on many a child’s shelf!

I did not manage to read every single one.
But it was fun to read Kubla Khan. And others.

[Davis Smith]

I only read the introduction, "The Story of This Book," which I found to be a very charming and well-written short story disguised as a personal essay. I really want to track down a nice copy of the complete book, as it has the potential to someday be a family heirloom.

[Amber Scaife · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of poetry for kiddos, from Chaucer on up. It's a nice collection, and pretty extensive.

[E & E’s Mama]

Save for second grade

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 1001 CBYMRBYGU. Now this was a challenge. Some are English, yet not in English. Here’s a sample:

“Hay, nou the day dauis;
The jolie Cok crauis;
Nou shroudis the shauis,
Throu Natur anone….”
Some relate stories that are outside my experiences:

“When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry, ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.”

Some are in dialect:

“There were twa brethren in the north,
They went to the school thegither;
The one unto the other said,
‘Will you try a warsle afore?’

Some are familiar with additional verses, including BINGO. Did you know there was a verse about a miller who gets a cask of ale and calls it STINGO?

And then, of course, as I expected, many, many very familiar poems, like Blake’s The Tyger and Tennyson’s The Eagle and Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” A whole section on war and lots of poems about death and killing and pain and lovers; all very surprising to find in a “children’s book.” (A question: Is this a children’s book? What makes it so?)

[Cheryl]

Huge.

I loved the preface, though it was rather mysterious (who is Narhum, and will he ever return, is he dead, is he imaginary?). (Research gives me an answer: https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/edin...)

But the rest is too intimidating. I read poetry for intimacy. Perhaps I could read this in volumes, but in print all at once it looks like 'everything but the kitchen sink' was thrown in. Annotations much more sparse than some blurbs claim, I see as I flip through.

I will look for smaller collections (& maybe anthologies) by the author, and for more of his stories. Later.

dnf August 2023

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent read of little known poems such as the Wee Wee Man plus annotations.

My only criticism is that the notes are the back of the book/s (in paperbook it is two books, confusing enough) which makes it hard to read.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite liked de la Mare's introduction. It set a good tone for the book.

[Steve Clark]

Edition: New Ed