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Pursuit of the Transcendent

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British Writer and Poet Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

I am only now beginning to appreciate the work of Walter de la Mare. As the Poetry Foundation entry on him states, “His complete works form a sustained treatment of romantic themes: dreams, death, rare states of mind and emotion, fantasy worlds of childhood, and the pursuit of the transcendent.” Here is one of my favorite poems of his:

Music

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees,
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.

When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.

When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
While from Time’s woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.

The Way Things Are

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English Poet, Writer, and Novelist Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Usually, during the month of January, I concentrate on reading the work of authors that I have not read before. Due to illness and wildfires, my reading this month has been mostly nil. As a result of reading an article in the New York Review of Books, however, I have decided on my next new “discovery,” Walter de la Mare. The following quote comes from his Memoirs of a Midget (1921).

Not that in an existence so passive riddles never came my way. As one morning I brushed past a bush of lads’ love (or maidens’ ruin, as some call it), its fragrance sweeping me from top to toe, I stumbled on the carcass of a young mole. Curiosity vanquished the first gulp of horror. Holding my breath, with a stick I slowly edged it up in the dust and surveyed the white heaving nest of maggots in its belly with a peculiar and absorbed recognition. “Ah, ha!” a voice cried within me, “so this is what is in wait; this is how things are”; and I stooped with lips drawn back over my teeth to examine the stinking mystery more closely. That was a lesson I have never unlearned.