The children who explored the brook and found <br />A desert island with a sandy cove <br />(A hiding place, but very dangerous ground, <br /> <br />For here the water buffalo may rove, <br />The kinkajou, the mungabey, abound <br />In the dark jungle of a mango grove, <br /> <br />And shadowy lemurs glide from tree to tree - <br />The guardians of some long-lost treasure-trove) <br />Recount their exploits at the nursery tea <br /> <br />And when the lamps are lit and curtains drawn <br />Demand some poetry, please. Whose shall it be, <br />At not quite time for bed? ... <br /> <br />Or when the lawn <br />Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return <br />Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn, <br />The sad intangible who grieve and yearn; <br /> <br />When the familiar is suddenly strange <br />Or the well known is what we yet have to learn, <br />And two worlds meet, and intersect, and change; <br /> <br />When cats are maddened in the moonlight dance, <br />Dogs cower, flitter bats, and owls range <br />At witches' sabbath of the maiden aunts; <br /> <br />When the nocturnal traveller can arouse <br />No sleeper by his call; or when by chance <br />An empty face peers from an empty house; <br /> <br />By whom, and by what means, was this designed? <br />The whispered incantation which allows <br />Free passage to the phantoms of the mind? <br /> <br />By you; by those deceptive cadences <br />Wherewith the common measure is refined; <br />By conscious art practised with natural ease; <br /> <br />By the delicate, invisible web you wove - <br />The inexplicable mystery of sound.<br /><br />Thomas Stearns Eliot<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-walter-de-la-mare/
