Nancy wrote to me looking for: “the complete poem by Walter de la Mare which starts with: ‘Someone came a-knocking on my wee small door….'”
Here is Walter de la Mare’s poem called SOME ONE:
SOME ONE
Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,
I’m sure – sure – sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right,
But naught there was a-stirring
In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl’s call,
Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.
You can find this poem online in PEACOCK PIE A Book of Rhymes by Walter de la Mare.
Here’s another poem from the book you might like…
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 silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
Hope you enjoy them!
Mama Lisa
This article was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Authors, Books & Stories, Canada, Countries & Cultures, England, English, Languages, Mama Lisa, Online Books, Poems, Poetry, Poets, SOME ONE, United Kingdom, USA, Walter de la Mare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
March 22nd, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Thank you!
I have been racking my brain for a very long time, trying to remember the exact words of this poem, learnt in school in Ireland 60-odd years ago!
July 21st, 2010 at 4:48 am
“Incredible!!!” How one small poem can haunt you. I have been searching for the ending to this poem for ages…thank you so very much.
August 3rd, 2010 at 12:57 pm
i love this poem so many memorries are attached to this poem
November 6th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Thank you for this poem. I have always loved “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare and this one goes so well with it!
May 11th, 2011 at 5:20 am
love the poem “some one” learnt it in grade school…brings back lots of fun memories…
May 26th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
i was about 10 or 12 when i heard this poem at school we had to learn it , but as years passed on i recalled only the first verse this always was my favourite .
August 31st, 2011 at 7:27 am
Thank you for providing the whole poem of ‘Some one’.
I could not remember the second verse fully.
I learnt it at primary school in South Africa almost 60 years ago!
So glad it’s still popular.
Thank you.
October 5th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Similarly, I learned this poem when I was 6 in St Cuthbert’s School Edinburgh. My teacher, Miss Mitchell, posed the question to the class, who do you think it was? We all made suggestions but there was no real answer.
It’s always been in my mind.
January 6th, 2014 at 11:35 am
Thank you for printing this. I love this poem, which we memorized in elementary school in the early 60s. I remember the first six lines as above, but the rest was lost to me. I thought it turned out that the knocking was “just the wind.”
March 14th, 2017 at 6:26 pm
Can’t believe I found the poem. Didn’t know the name of the author, I love this poem, I memorized it when I was in the 6th or 7th grade. I would say it to my own children, now I say it to my grandchildren. To now I still remember very work, Love this poem.