Walter de la Mare’s “Dreams” is a quiet plea for lost innocence. The speaker begins by asking a child to be gentle and true, describing the child’s eyes as a shadowy, mysterious sea under a starry night. That image gives the child a kind of depth and almost otherworldly honesty.
But the middle stanza admits that words are too shallow to hold such things. Dreams fade, and with them youth—both in the mind and in the eyes. By the end, the speaker is not sweetly nostalgic; he is weary. The “wise of the world” have silenced something in him, leaving only a tired heart. All he can do is call out to the lonely dreams of childhood, asking them to return. The mood is tender, mournful, and full of yearning for a kind of vision that adulthood has worn away.