... fault with Harin for using rhymes which Shelley uses freely in his best poems. You must remember also that Harin's poetry has been appreciated by some of the finest English writers like Binyon and De la Mare. But anyway all growing writers (unless they are very lucky) meet with depreciation and criticism at first until people get accustomed to it. Perhaps if Harin had published his poems under the name... haunted house on earth which has got possessed by some occult presences. Arjava must no doubt have taken his starting point from a reminiscence of this poem, but there is nothing else in common with De la Mare—his poem is an extraordinarily energetic and powerful vision of an occult world and every phrase is intimately evocative of the beyond as a thing vividly seen and strongly lived—it is not on earth... economy of phrase and image and brevity of movement but revelatory in each touch as opposed to the dim moonlight suggestiveness supported by a profusion of detail and long elaborating development in De la Mare—of course that has its value also—make us entirely feel ourselves Page 487 there. I therefore maintain my description "original" not only for the latter part of the poem but for the opening ...
... meant those of the 20th century, i.e. writers who have made a name and are trying to do something new. I have very little familiarity with the names of modem poets subsequent to A.E. & Yeats and De La Mare, all of whom you know. There are about a hundred of them moderns, Spender + x y z p2 etc. Before that they were Hopkins and Fletcher and others and before that Meredith and Hardy and Francis Thompson... senses)—all four indeed, precisely because they are so simple that the emotion and experience go straight through without a veil. You asked me to read Hardy, Spender, Meredith, Hopkins, besides De la Mare. A.E. and Yeats ... But how will Meredith and others help? Their poetry has nothing in common with ours, except the turn of expression, if that's what you mean. Please tell me whom I should take ...
... how dark it is, Beneath its vast-boughed trees. Here also is a haunted language, but mostly de la Mare is the singer of a romantic strangeness and of the superstitious instinct. It is a domain different from Yeats's: even in the faery element their treatments are unlike, for de la Mare is a poet of the imaginative child, while Yeats goes beyond to a Page 17 supernatural... "inscape" and making vagueness itself a positive quality of vision. Only one contemporary poet can challenge comparison with Yeats in the art of indefinite suggestion by word and rhythm: Walter de la Mare. Their techniques overlap in several respects, mainly in a use of spondees to produce mournful and remote reverberations; but Yeats is a greater musician and his management of broad vowels and harmonious... most artistic effects: A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound, or, No, not angelical but of the old gods, Who wander about the world to waken the heart. Walter de la Mare is not only noted for spondaic rhythms and for assonances, like Oh, no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose; but he practises too a queer magic by ...
... years but a secret continuity ageless with an eternal beauty — and the sense of this beauty takes on vividness through the mention of the rose, the time-honoured symbol of the ideally beautiful. De la Mare is not quite mystical here: he is only mysterious, and the natural rose is just dimly touched by the supernatural, but the exquisite intonation creates the spell as of a sacred chant; and the music... composite English being is on top. My fellow-poet in the Ashram, Norman Dowsett, is not so inhibited in this matter — maybe because the element on top in Dowsett is really Norman! More even than de la Mare, W. B. Yeats in his early phase calls for a bit of chanting tone. There are two phases of Yeats. The later shows him a poet of the athletic intelligence and will, he is taut and powerful and deals... openly at play in Wales and Ireland. Yeats the Irishman is unforgettably wistful and idealistic with Celticism in his early work and brings intonation almost everywhere. More mystically open than in de la Mare is the sense of eternal beauty communicated to us by the Yeatsian incan-tation in the two well-known stanzas knit together by a single rhyme-scheme: All things uncomely and broken, all things ...
... "terrible elsewhere" are Chadwick's ...the empty eerie courtyard With no name or ...a crescent moon swung wanly White as curd. And, as the poems proceed, de la Mare goes on increasing Page 150 his exquisite ghostliness with strange movements whose meaning is elusive, while Chadwick presses home to a weirdly dynamic symbol of a soul-attitude... enamoured of the English countryside. The magic vision within many verses casts our mind back to Yeats's Celticism and here and there is a drift of dreamy fancifulness not very far removed from de la Mare. Even on some occasions the colouring shows a touch of the minutely marking as well as luxurious painter eye of the young Tennyson, and not infrequently the phrasing bears an aspect of traditional ...
... possibilities as one can scarcely do with the help of any other contemporary poet except Walter de la Mare in some of his finest lines. AE at his highest is as great as Yeats but he hasn't Yeats's Page 10 subtly rich incantation-effect. AH is a much greater poet than Walter de la Mare - yet there is at times a certain depth of magical sound in the latter which is usually absent ...
... Binyon and De la Mare." Add Santayana whose prose is better than most Englishmen's Thompson rejoined: "Well, the merits of the latter people you mention were extra-literary. Show the works of the Indians to people like Eliot and see." God knows what he means. I don't think God knows. What the blazes does all this nonsense mean? The latter people like Binyon and De la Mare have no literary ...
... ions are perfect. I suppose it comes from some plane of intuitive inspiration." A Comparison between "Pharphar" and Walter De la Mare's "Arabia" 1 "It is indeed charming—De la Mare seems to have an unfailing beauty of language and rhythm and an inspired loveliness of fancy that is captivating. But still it is fancy, the mind playing with its delicate imaginations. A hint ...
... economy of phrase and image and brevity of movement but revelatory in each touch as Opposed to the dim moonlight suggestions supported by a profusion of detail and long elaborating development in De la Mare— of course that has its value also — make us entirely feel ourselves there. I therefore maintain my description 'original' not only for the latter part of the poem but for the opening also. It is ...
... estions are perfect. I suppose it comes from some plane of intuitive inspiration." A Comparison between "Pharphar" and Walter De la Mac's "Arabia" 1 "It is indeed charming—De la Mare seems to have an unfailing beauty of language and rhythm and an inspired loveliness of fancy that is captivating. But still it is fancy, the mind playing with its delicate imaginations. A hint of ...
... October 1934 Please give me a few names of poets—especially modern poets, whom I should study. I have very little familiarity with the names of modern poets subsequent to A. E. and Yeats and De la Mare, all of whom you know. There are about a hundred of them moderns, Spender + x + y + z + p² etc. Before that there were Hopkins and Flecker and others and before that Meredith and Hardy and Francis ...
... secret places. Doubdess, all poetry has an inwarddrawing force, but there is a mood and a rhythm that have it in a special degree and render poetic lines spell-binding. Among modern poets, de la Mare and Yeats are the two that breathe the inner rhythm most audibly, though the former is only mysterious and the latter semi-mystical with what are known as "the middle worlds". For the full mystical ...
... no poetry is greater than ours has been. It all seemed to end with the last war - before that war there were Eliot and Yeats and David Jones and Dylan Thomas and Edwin Muir and Vernon Watkins and de la Mare and many fine poets of lesser stature. Now there is no-one; David Gascoyne stands alone. I do my best which is not good enough. Otherwise a celebration by commonplace writers, of the commonplace ...
... fault with Harin for using rhymes which Shelley uses freely in his best poems. You must remember also that Harin's poetry has been appreciated by some of the finest English writers like Binyon and De la Mare. But anyway all growing writers (unless they are very lucky) meet with, depreciation and criticism at first until people get accustomed to it. Perhaps if Harin had published his poems under the name ...
... Aeschylus and Dante: Dante and Shakespeare: Shakespeare and Blake: the poetry of the school of Dryden and Pope: Shelley's Skylark: Baudelaire's "vulgarity": Anatole France's "ironising": Walter de la Mare's Listeners: five kinds of poetic style: austerity in poetry: architectonics in poetic composition: "great" poetry and merely beautiful poetry: limits of personal vagaries in criticism: relation ...
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