'Richly, Sometimes Dreamily, Melodic'

A friend has given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt and Co., 1930), with a printed note before the title page: 

“Three hundred copies of ‘Poems for Children’ have been specially printed and bound, and have been signed by the author. Of these two hundred and eighty are for sale.

 

“This copy is Number 83.”

 

The number is written in black ink, as is the author’s spidery though legible signature beneath it: Walter de la Mare. The volume collects poems previously published in Songs of Childhood (1902), Peacock Pie (1913) and various periodicals. Here is an early poem, “The Fly,” reminiscent of Blake:

 

“How large unto the tiny fly

Must little things appear! -

A rosebud like a feather bed,

Its prickle like a spear;

 

“A dewdrop like a looking-glass,

A hair like golden wire;

The smallest grain of mustard-seed

As fierce as coals of fire;

 

“A loaf of bread, a lofty hill;

 A wasp, a cruel leopard;

 And specks of salt as bright to see

            As lambkins to a shepherd.”

 

Unlike many writers, de la Mare seems not to have stylistically evolved over time. The early poems are generally indistinguishable from later work. He was a master of sorts from the start. He is also unusual in having blurred his audiences. His poems for children can be appreciated by adults without embarrassment or tedium, and vice versa. I remember reading the poems in Peacock Pie as a kid, first in anthologies, then in the volume itself. De la Mare’s charms will be lost on the tin-eared and his poems will be dismissed as kiddie fodder or a species of nonsense verse, like the unreadable Edward Lear’s. Anthony Hecht wrote of him:

 

“De la Mare’s poetry is richly, sometimes dreamily, melodic, and the subtlety and skill of his prosody probably derives in part from his familiarity with folk literature and traditional English nursery rhymes.”

 

Here is a poem from Peacock Pie, “The Bookworm,” that can be fully appreciated by an adult who remembers what it’s like to be a child:

 

“'I'm tired -- Oh, tired of books,' said Jack,

        ‘I long for meadows green,

    And woods, where shadowy violets

        Nod their cool leaves between;

    I long to see the ploughman stride

        His darkening acres o’er,

    To hear the hoarse sea-waters drive

        Their billows ’gainst the shore;

    I long to watch the sea-mew wheel

        Back to her rock-perched mate;

    Or, where the breathing cows are housed,

        Lean dreaming o’er the gate.

    Something has gone, and ink and print

        Will never bring it back;

    I long for the green fields again,

        I'm tired of books,’ said Jack.”