The poem Suppose, which appeared in our first number, starts on its fantastic flight from a face with eyes of wonderment in it; and from another head—a head crowned, a neck girdled—comes The Comb, perfect in itself without any picture:
My mother sate me at her glass;
This necklet of bright flowers she wove;
Crisscross her gentle hands did pass,
And wound in my hair her love.
Deep in the mirror our glances met,
And grieved, lest from her care I roam,
She kissed me through her tears, and set
On high this spangling comb.
Mirage is lovelier still, and far more slender in its origins; how Mr. de la Mare's imagination can fill out an outline that really is given is shown in his delicious poem of Master Rabbit. There is a charming sketch: a rabbit, and nothing more. But to the poet a whole scene comes up, country scents, green grasshoppers talking:
And wings like amber,
Dispread in light,
As from bush to bush
Linnet took flight.
He sees the rabbit looking out from the shadow-rimmed mouth of his shady cavern at sunset. Rabbit sees him:
Snowy flit of a scut,
He was into his hole;
And—stamp, stamp, stamp,
Through dim labyrinths clear—
The whole world darkened,
A human near.
This is an extra number to Peacock Pie, and the poems as a whole make us once more impatient for a collected volume of Mr. de la Mare's work which will show the bulk and the quality of the performance of one of the most exquisite artists in words who has ever contributed to the unequalled treasury of our English lyrics. Nevertheless it must be admitted that his average level is higher when he is not writing verses to a series of pictures.