Old and alone, sit we,
    Caged, riddle-rid men,
  Lost to earth’s “Listen!” and “See!”
    Thought’s “Wherefore?” and “When?”

There is vision in some of the later verses in the poem, but, if we read it alongside of Mr. Yeats’s, we get an impression of unsuccess of execution.  Whether one can fairly use the word “unsuccess” in reference to verse which succeeds so exquisitely as Mr. de la Mare’s in being literature is a nice question.  But how else is one to define the peculiar quality of his style—­its hesitations, its vaguenesses, its obscurities?  On the other hand, even when his lines leave the intellect puzzled and the desire for grammar unsatisfied, a breath of original romance blows through them and appeals to us like the illogical burden of a ballad.  Here at least are the rhythms and raptures of poetry, if not always the beaten gold of speech.  Sometimes Mr. de la Mare’s verse reminds one of piano-music, sometimes of bird-music:  it wavers so curiously between what is composed and what is unsophisticated.  Not that one ever doubts for a moment that Mr. de la Mare has spent on his work an artist’s pains.  He has made a craft out of his innocence.  If he produces in his verse the effect of the wind among the reeds, it is the result not only of his artlessness, but of his art.  He is one of the modern poets who have broken away from the metrical formalities of Swinburne and the older men, and who, of set purpose, have imposed upon poetry the beauty of a slightly irregular pulse.

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—­

  The skill of words to sweeten despair,

such as will, we are confident, give him a permanent place in English literature.

(2) THE GROUP

The latest collection of Georgian verse has had a mixed reception.  One or two distinguished critics have written of it in the mood of a challenge to mortal combat.  Men have begun to quarrel over the question whether we are living in an age of poetic dearth or of poetic plenty—­whether the world is a nest of singing-birds or a cage in which the last canary has been dead for several years.