Would bring the dust which in her sight
Had given its all for these!
So beautiful a spirit as Mr. de la Mare’s, however, could not remain content with idealizing from afar the sacrifices and heroism of dying men. In the long poem called Motley he turns from the heroism to the madness of war, translating his vision into a fool’s song:
Nay, but a dream I had
Of a world all mad,
Not simply happy mad like me,
Who am mad like an empty scene
Of water and willow-tree,
Where the wind hath been;
But that foul Satan-mad,