First line

Hey, Tom. I love that poem. It's called "Silver" by Walter de La Mare. I think I remember most of it:

Softly, silently, now the moon,
Walks the night in her silver shoon.
This way and that she peers and sees,
Silver fruit upon silver trees.............

It's better to search by phrases, not by possible writers.

I googled "Walks the night in her silver shoon" and found this:

http://www.poemtree.com/poems/Silver.htm

Silver



Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

This way, and that, she peers, and sees

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;

A harvest mouse goes scampering by,

With silver claws and a silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,

By silver reeds in a silver stream.



Walter de la Mare

And - in the portal it shall soon be!

Deb, Here's another by De La Mare that should go into the portal:

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

-- Walter De La Mare

The name of the poem is "The Listeners". Odd one, no?

Go to your public library and see if they have the software that allows you to identify lines of poetry.

Softly
Thank you everybody. And, yes, the PL does have Grainger's Index to Poetry which would certainly tell me everything I needed to know in order to find this, but as I just found out from dlowan posting of the entire poem - if you get the first line wrong, which I did, you aren't goigd to have much luck with that approach. Like if you can't spell, how can you use a dictionary . . .

Lol! 'Twas MOST frustrating, Tonkitten!

I got a hit first time I searched - it was in a site devoted t othe moon.

BUT - I couldn't copy and paste, for some reason! It crashed my IE when I tried! Twice! But - I knew then it was Silver, by Walter de la Mare - so the rest was easy.

I woulda had it in seconds of firts trying if I coulda copied it!

First line
I have a great poetry source, but I guess you have to be in the US to use it, since it requires a public library card. Though, come to think of it, there's no reason why an Australian lPL couldn't subscribe, or any other library in the worl,d for that matter.

It's called Litfinder, but it's not something an individual would normally subscribe to; it's pretty expensive. Anyway, if anyone out there has a card for a PL that subscribes, this is the best source I've found yet.

I tried with the correct first line, and up popped "Silver" as neat as you please. Frankly, I was a little bothered that I couldn't find it, because Litfinder is so very comprehensive - and growing all the time.

Thanks again for all your help.