The lost shoe | Poor little Lucy

by Walter De la Mare (1873 - 1956)

The lost shoe

Language: English

Poor little Lucy
  By some mischance,
Lost her shoe
  As she did dance -
'Twas not on the stairs,
  Not in the hall;
Not where they sat
  At supper at all.
She looked in the garden,
  But there it was not;
Henhouse, or kennel,
  Or high dovecote.
Dairy and meadow,
  And wild woods through
Showed not a trace
  Of Lucy's shoe.
Bird nor bunny
  Nor glimmering moon
Breathed a whisper
  Of where 'twas gone.
It was cried and cried,
  Oyez and Oyez!
In French, Dutch, Latin,
  And Portuguese.
Ships the dark seas
  Went plunging through,
But none brought news
  Of Lucy's shoe;
And still she patters
  In silk and leather,
O'er snow, sand, shingle,
  In every weather;
Spain, and Africa,
  Hindustan,
Java, China,
  And lamped Japan;
Plain and desert,
  She hops-hops through,
Pernambuco
  To gold Peru;
Mountain and forest,
  And river too,
All the world over
  For her lost shoe.

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Text Authorship:

by Walter De la Mare (1873 - 1956), "The lost shoe", appears in Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes, in 2. Boys and Girls, no. 4, first published 1913 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

by Gary Bachlund (b. 1947), "The lost shoe", 2006, from Pieces of Peacock Pie, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
by Anthony Francis Dominic Milner (b. 1925), "The lost shoe", published 1959 [ SSA chorus a cappella ], from Peacock Pie [sung text not yet checked]
by James Oldfield Turner (1905 - ?), "The lost shoe", published 1959 [ satb chorus a cappella ] [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2007-04-25
Line count: 44
Word count: 149