June 13, 19 I 8 
Land & Water 
17 
Life and Letters ^y J. C Sonire 
Walter de la Mare 
MR. WALTER DE LA MARE, indisputably 
the most cunning artist among the younger 
poets, has still to receive bis due measure of 
recognition. This probably does not trouble 
him. He betrays no desire to be thought or 
to bi: .1 "great poet" in the customary sense. He is^f the 
dreamers, and one of the quietest and most secluded of 
them ; a man who cares only for what seems to him beautiful, 
in nature and in man, who goes where he can find it, and who 
produces its effect and its praise in small poems as nearly 
perfect as he can make them. They percolate unobtnisively 
into the world, and there' are not very many of them. 
» ♦ » » * » 
In sixteen years Mr. de la Mare published three small 
books of verse. To that sparse production has now been 
added a new volume, Motley (Constable, 3s. 6d. net). There 
is no new and unexpected development in it : Mr. de la Mare 
does not suddenly break into a long blank verse narrative, 
a ballad of vigorous action, or a robust proclamation of faith. 
The subjects are akin to the old ones, the forms are growths 
from the old stem : the poet still sings quietly of things he 
has heard, and felt, and seen : the only change is that he has 
matured, that, a careful artist from the first, he now observes 
and writes more surely than ever. The things he feels and 
sees and hears are mostly perceived in quiet places, by moon- 
light or starlight, at dusk or in the dark : thin ghosts, old 
memories, birds, insects, and secrets of the heart that steal 
slyly out in silence. "When," he wrote in an earlier poem : 
When the dusk is falling, 
Silence broods so deep, 
It seems that every wind that breathes 
Blows from the fields of sleep. 
It is his diaracteristic atmosphere. When one has read any 
of his books one feels that his spirit haunts three places : 
a lonely garden, an old deserted house, and a wood at night. 
In the garden the flowers are untroubled by wind, except 
by an occasional "s-sh" that comes and passes, and leaves 
the stillness intenser and a little uncanny ; there is a sleeping 
fountain, a mouldering statue or two, and ages ago children 
have been there. The house stands among trees ; its rooms 
are barred with moonlight and black shadows ; insects tick 
in its mouldering timbers, mice nibble, and the stairs creak ; 
and if a voice comes there it is bodiless and plaintive. But 
the wood, though quiet also, is fresh and aJive, an English 
wood at night, with oaks and beeches stretching their branches 
to the stars, dew wet upon grass and berry and thorn, a bird 
singing, and a hidden stream bubbling in the dark. There is 
nothing recondite about these scenes, and it might have been 
thought that poets had "done" the empty house and the 
deserted garden to death. But Mr. de la Mare has not 
chosen them because they are picturesque ; he is drawn to 
them by their kinship to something in himself ; it is in them 
that he is most truly himself. And for his woods, though he 
has never elaborated a "description" of one, but contents 
himself with almost parsimonious small touches, I know no 
other place in literature where just those night woods are to 
be found in all their sweetness. They are here in Motley once 
more — the garden also, and the empty house : 
"Secrets," sighs the night wind. 
Vacancy is all I find ; 
Every keyhole I have made 
Wail a sununons, faint and sad, 
No voice ever answers me. 
Only vacancy ? 
"Once, once . . ." the cricket shrills. 
And far and near the quiet fills 
With its tiny voice, and then 
Hush falls again. 
Yet his repetitions are only superficial ; for he is writing 
sincerely, not manufacturing, and that may mean a hundred 
new things with the old physical materials. 
• •*•«« 
This book is not to be recommended as an introduction to 
Mr. de la Mare's work. There is nothing in it which makes 
so abrupt an assault — if one may use that adjective and 
that noun of anything by so quiet an artist — as many poems 
in Peacock Pie and The Listeners. Even the cuisory reader 
will get delight from many things in those two earlier books. 
The cursory reader from this will get none ; and the inex- 
perienced reader may be baffled by his unfamiliarity with 
Mr. de la Mare's atmosphere and idiom, may be checked 
because he has not learnt the rudiments elsewhere of a 
method of expression here brought to an extreme pitch of 
refinement. All readers who do not know him may em- 
phatically bfe advised to approach him through the two 
earlier books. But those who do know him will discover 
and treasure in Motley the fine liower of his genius : a world 
of spirit now explored and known, a world of sense delimited, 
defined, and described with unfailing accuracy, a language 
scrupulously purged and beautifully suited to its purpose, 
a precision of rhythmical effect grown almost perfect. He 
has, as one has indicated, his limitations ; his instrument has 
view strings, and he never sings very loudly. But he has 
"loved," as the dying Keats said of himself, "the principle 
of beauty in all things," and his love has spoken in a music 
as melodious, as poignant, and as individual as Chopin's. 
Beyond the inculcation of that love he has no doctrines ; the 
professor who wants to write a chapter about his "message" 
will have his work cut out. He has an infinite sensitiveness 
but femarkably few general ideas ; the most that one might 
do \lfould be to argue plausibly that he believes in, and 
evidently lives by, things in which he does not know that he 
believes. But that one dominant love, source of all nourish- 
ment and all consolation, is evident always, and its main 
aspects are shown in the two poems with which the book 
ends — "The Scribe" and "Farewell." I will quote them, 
instead of vulgarising them by paraphrase. Here is the first ; 
What lovely things 
Thy hand hath made : 
The smooth-plumed bird 
In its emerald shade. 
The seed of the grass. 
The speck of stone 
Which the wayfaring ant 
Stirs— and hastes on ! 
Thoijgh I should sit 
By some tarn in thy hills. 
Using its ink 
As the spirit wills 
To write of Earth's wonders. 
Its live, willed things, 
I'^Ut would its ages 
On soundless wings 
Ere unto Z 
My pen drew nigh ; 
Leviathan told. 
And the honey-fly : 
And still would remain 
My wit to try — 
My worn reeds broken, 
The dark tarn dry, ^ 
All words forgotten — 
Thou, Lord, and I. 
The second is its complement ; it is as simple in statement, 
as unaffected, and as successful : 
When I lie where shades of darkness 
Shall no more assail mine eyes. 
Nor the rain make lamentation 
When the wind sighs ; 
How will fare the world whose wonder 
Was the very proof of me .' 
Memory fades, must the remembered 
Perishing be ? 
Oh, when this my dust surrenders 
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again. 
May these loved and loving faces 
Please other men I 
May the rusting harvest hedgerow 
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine. 
And us happy children gather 
Posies once mine. ' 
Look thy last on all things lovely 
Every hour. Let no night 
Seal thy sense in deathly skimber 
Till to delight. 
Thou hast paid thy utmost blessing ; 
Since that all things thou wouldst praise 
Beauty took from those who loved them 
In other days, 
Mr. de la Mare has been called a poet's poet. Perhaps he is. 
If so — or, for that matter, if not — poets can learn nlany 
tilings from him. One is that it is better not to pretend. 
Another is that a great deal can be done with very few- 
adjectives. 
