He is typical of his generation, however, not only in his form, but in the pain of his unbelief (as shown in Betrayal), and in that sense of half-revelation that fills him always with wonder and sometimes with hope. His poems tell of the visits of strange presences in dream and vacancy. In A Vacant Day, after describing the beauty of a summer moon, with clear waters flowing under willows, he closes with the verses:
I listened; and my heart was dumb
With praise no language could express;
Longing in vain for him to come
Who had breathed such blessedness.
On this fair world, wherein we pass
So chequered and so brief a stay,
And yearned in spirit to learn, alas!
What kept him still away.
In these poems we have the genius of the beauty of gentleness expressing itself as it is doing nowhere else just now in verse. Mr. de la Mare’s poetry is not only lovely, but lovable. He has a personal possession—