Skip to content
Linespedia

The Ride-By-Nights

Topics: classic

Up on their brooms the Witches stream,      Crooked and black in the crescent's gleam;      One foot high, and one foot low,      Bearded, cloaked, and cowled, they go.      'Neath Charlie's Wane they twitter and tweet,      And away they swarm 'neath the Dragon's feet.      With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway,      And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way.      Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair      They hover and squeak in the empty air.      Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion      To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion;      Up, then, and over to wheel amain,      Under the silver, and home again.

AI analysis available. Enable JavaScript to interact.

About this line

"Up on their brooms the Witches stream,..."

Walter De La Mare's contribution to classic is further solidified by the brilliance found in "The Ride-By-Nights"... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

Classified Tags

Related lines

"Have you been catching of fish, Tom Noddy?         Have you snared a weeping hare?     Have you whistled, 'No Nunny,'and gunned a poor bunny,"

"Sand, sand; hills of sand;         And the wind where nothing is      Green and sweet of the land;         No grass, no trees,         No bir"

"Like an old battle, youth is wild With bugle and spear, and counter cry, Fanfare and drummery, yet a child Dreaming of that sweet chivalry, T"

"There was nought in the Valley      But a Tower of Ivory, Its base enwreathed with red      Flowers that at evening      Caught the sun's cr"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Continue Reading

"Have you been catching of fish, Tom Noddy?        ..."

Weekly Poetic Insight

Join our literary Sanctuary

Get the most inspiring lines, poetic analysis, and secret shayaris delivered to your inbox every Sunday.