Yet Heaven hath its quiet shroud
    Of deep, immutable blue—­
  We cry, “The end!” We are bowed
    By the dread, “’Tis true!”

  While the Shape who hoofs applause
    Behind our deafened ear,
  Hoots—­angel-wise—­“the Cause”! 
    And affrights even fear.

There is something in these lines that reminds one of Mr. Thomas Hardy’s black-edged indictment of life.

As we read Mr. de la Mare, indeed, we are reminded again and again of the work of many other poets—­of the ballad-writers, the Elizabethan song-writers, Blake and Wordsworth, Mr. Hardy and Mr. W.B.  Yeats.  In some instances it is as though Mr. de la Mare had deliberately set himself to compose a musical variation on the same theme as one of the older masters.  Thus, April Moon, which contains the charming verse—­

  “The little moon that April brings,
    More lovely shade than light,
  That, setting, silvers lonely hills
    Upon the verge of night”—­

is merely Wordsworth’s “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” turned into new music.  New music, we should say, is Mr. de la Mare’s chief gift to literature—­a music not regular or precise or certain, but none the less a music in which weak rhymes and even weak phrases are jangled into a strange beauty, as in Alexander, which begins: 

  It was the Great Alexander,
    Capped with a golden helm,
  Sate in the ages, in his floating ship,
    In a dead calm.

One finds Mr. de la Mare’s characteristic, unemphatic music again in the opening lines of Mrs. Grundy: 

  Step very softly, sweet Quiet-foot,
  Stumble not, whisper not, smile not,

where “foot” and “not” are rhymes.

It is the stream of music flowing through his verses rather than any riches of imagery or phrase that makes one rank the author so high among living poets.  But music in verse can hardly be separated from intensity and sincerity of vision.  This music of Mr. de la Mare’s is not a mere craftsman’s tune:  it is an echo of the spirit.  Had he not seen beautiful things passionately, Mr. de la Mare could never have written: 

  Thou with thy cheek on mine,
  And dark hair loosed, shalt see
  Take the far stars for fruit
  The cypress tree,
  And in the yew’s black
  Shall the moon be.

Beautiful as Mr. de la Mare’s vision is, however, and beautiful as is his music, we miss in his work that frequent perfection of phrase which is part of the genius of (to take another living writer) Mr. Yeats.  One has only to compare Mr. Yeats’s I Heard the Old, Old Men Say with Mr. de la Mare’s The Old Men to see how far the latter falls below verbal mastery.  Mr. Yeats has found the perfect embodiment for his imagination.  Mr. de la Mare seems in comparison to be struggling with his medium, and contrives in his first verse to be no more than just articulate: