Then, far away to the right thro' the moonbeams "Wukka Wukka" will go the machine-guns, And, far away to the left

For a space in the clear of the moon.

II

I should like to imagine

A moonlight in which the machine-guns of trouble Will be silent.

Do you remember, my dear,

Long ago, on the cliffs, in the moonlight,

Looking over to Flatholme

And the things that you told me

Little things in the clear of the moon,

The little, sad things of a life.

We shall do it again

Full surely,

Sitting still, looking over at Flatholme.

Then, far away to the right

Shall sound the Machine Guns of trouble

Wukka-wukka!

And, far away to the left, under Flatholme,
Wukka-wuk! .

I wonder, my dear, can you stick it?
As we should say: 'Stick it, the Welch!"
In the dark of the moon,

Going over.

"THERE SHALL BE MORE JOY . . ."

The little angels of Heaven
Each wear a long white dress,
And in the tall arcadings
Play ball and play at chess;

With never a soil on their garments,
Not a sigh the whole day long,
Not a bitter note in their pleasure,
Not a bitter note in their song.

But they shall know keener pleasure,
And they shall know joy more rare—
Keener, keener pleasure

When you, my dear, come there.

The little angels of Heaven
Each wear a long white gown,
And they lean over the ramparts
Waiting and looking down.

Walter De la Mare

The author of some of the most haunting lyrics in contemporary poetry, Walter De la Mare, was born in 1873. Although he did not begin to bring out his work in book form until he was over 30, he is, as Harold Williams has written, "the singer of a young and romantic world, a singer even for children, understanding and perceiving as a child." De la Mare paints simple scenes of miniature loveliness; he uses thin-spun fragments of fairy-like delicacy and achieves a grace that is remarkable in its universality. "In a few words, seemingly artless and unsought" (to quote Williams again), "he can express a pathos or a hope as wide as man's life."

De la Mare is an astonishing joiner of words; in Peacock Pie (1913) he surprises us again and again by transforming what began as a child's nonsense-rhyme into a suddenly thrilling snatch of music. A score of times he takes things as casual as the feeding of chickens or the swallowing of physic, berrypicking, eating, hair-cutting-and turns them into magic. These poems read like lyrics of William Shakespeare rendered by Mother Goose. The trick of revealing the ordinary in whimsical colors, of catching the commonplace off its guard, is the first of De la Mare's two magics.

This poet's second gift is his sense of the supernatural, of the fantastic other-world that lies on the edges of our consciousness. The Listeners (1912) is a book that, like all the best of De la Mare, is full of half-heard whispers; moonlight and mystery seem soaked in the lines, and a cool wind from Nowhere blows over them. That most magical of modern verses, The Listeners," and the brief music of "An Epitaph" are two fine examples among many. In the first of these poems

there is an uncanny splendor. What we have here is the effect, the thrill, the overtones of a ghost story rather than the narrative itself-the less than half-told adventure of some new Childe Roland heroically challenging a heedless universe. Never have silence and black night been reproduced more creepily, nor has the symbolism of man's courage facing the cryptic riddle of life been more memorably expressed.

De la Mare's chief distinction, however, lies not so much in what he says as in how he says it; he can even take outworn words like "thridding,” “athwart," amaranthine" " and make them live again in a poetry that is of no time and of all time. He writes, it has been said, as much for antiquity as for posterity; he is a poet who is distinctively in the world and yet not wholly of it.

THE LISTENERS

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor.

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller's head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark

stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-

'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

AN EPITAPH

Here lies a most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.