Can death haunt silence with a silver sound?
Can death, that hushes all music to a close,
Pluck one sweet wire scarce-audible that trembles,
As if a little child, called Purity,
Sang heedlessly on of his dear Imogen?
But even when this verse approaches a degree nearer to the reality of pain it is still, as it were, a reflected emotion; and there is no poignance in it. It is a winning echo of sorrowfulness, caught by one who has the habit of turning back to listen and look. Thus the studies of old age which we sometimes find here are drawn in the true romantic manner, with a sunset halo about them, and lightly shadowed by wistfulness and faint regret. And the thought of death, when it is allowed to enter, comes as caressingly as sleep. The little poem called "All That's Past," where the poet is thinking of how far down the roots of all things go, is only one example of many where melancholy is toned to the faintest strain of pensive sweetness:
Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the briar's boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are—
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
.....
Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
By Eve's nightingales;
We walk and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.
So we might continue to cull passages which represent one aspect or another of the specific quality of Mr de la Mare's poetry. The choice is embarrassingly rich, for there is remarkable unity of tone and technical perfection here. But there is a danger in the process, especially with work of so fine a grain; and one feels bound to repeat the warning that it is impossible to dissect its ultimate essence in this way. We can only come back to our comparison, and recalling the magical music of poems like "Arabia," "Queen Djenira," or "Voices"—in which all the characteristics noted are so intimately blended that it is impossible to disengage them—reiterate the fact that they possess the same inexplicable charm as the romantic work of Coleridge.
But that reminds us of the difference, and all that it implies. For, after all, this poet is a romanticist of the twentieth century, and not of the late eighteenth. It is true that his genius has surprisingly kept its youth (even more, that is to say, than the poet usually does); but it is a nonage which is clearly of this time and no other. The signs of this are clear enough. First and foremost, there is his humanity—in which perhaps all the others are included, and with which are certainly associated the simplicity and sincerity of his diction. It is as though the two famous principles on which the Lyrical Ballads were planned had in the fulness of time become united in the creative impulse of a single mind. That is not to charge Mr de la Mare with the combined weight of those two earlier giants, of course, but simply to observe the truth which Rupert Brooke expressed so finely when he said that the poetic spirit was coming back "to its wider home, the human heart." So that even a born romanticist like this cannot escape; and into the chilly enchantment of an older manner warm sunlight streams and fresh airs blow.
Obvious links with the life-movement of his time are not lacking, though as mere external evidence they are relatively unimportant. Of such are the synthesis of poetry and science in "The Happy Encounter"; and the detachment suggested in "Keep Innocency," where the poet reveals a full consciousness of the gulf between romance and reality. But the influence goes deeper than that. It is because he is a child of his age that he has observed children so lovingly, and has wrought child-psychology into his verse with such wonderful accuracy. That also is why he calls so gently out of 'thin-strewn memory' such a homely figure as the shy old maid in her old-fashioned parlour; and thence, too, comes the sympathy with toiling folk—considering them characteristically in the serene mood when their work is done—which underlies such pieces as "Old Susan" and "Old Ben":
Sad is old Ben Thistlewaite,
Now his day is done,
And all his children
Far away are gone.