Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.
Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen — and kissed me there.
© The Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare and The Society of Authors as their representative
Repetition is insistent. It insists we picture that mistletoe. Repetition also creates a stillness; nothing is moving. De la Mare frequently uses it for magical effects. Here it is not just immediate repetitions of words and images — the action of the first verse is also repeated, with only minor variation, in the second. It is strange enough in the first verse that someone unseen comes. The second verse is stranger still. It is as if a disembodied mouth has floated in, as grammatically it is the lips that “stooped in the still and shadowy air”. There is an air of dreamy wish-fulfilment: the lonely figure discovering, after everyone else has gone, that he has not been forgotten after all. Mistletoe is more associated with fertility than magic, yet by using the word “fairy”, de la Mare sets us up to suspect that something supernatural has taken place.
David Mills