A Portrait
Walter de la Mare wrote novels, short stories and poetry for both adults and children. Most of what he wrote is still readable but his poetry is his central achievement. His The Listeners emerges from survey after survey as the favourite poem of a very large number of people. These quatrains are from a self-portrait written towards the end of his life that reveals plainly the contradictions of his character. I can see similar contradictions in my own nature, and I wonder how many people can also. It seems to me that most make an effort to seem all of a piece. I have extracted these from a somewhat longer poem because it seems to me that they contain the essence of it while the rest is a little slacker.
Sunday November 22 2009
Old: yet unchanged; still pottering in his thoughts;
Still eagerly enslaved by books and print;
Less plagued, perhaps, by rigid musts and oughts,
But no less frantic in vain argument;
Still happy as a child, with its small toys,
Over his inkpot and his bits and pieces --
Life's arduous, fragile and ingenuous joys,
Whose charm failed never -- nay, it even increases!
Haunted by questions no man answered yet;
Pining to leap from A clean on to Z;
Absorbed by problems which the wise forget;
Avid for fantasy -- yet how staid a head!
Senses at daggers with his intellect;
Quick, stupid; vain, retiring; ardent, cold;
Faithful and fickle; rash and circumspect;
And never yet at rest in any fold;
Not yet inert, but with a tortured breast
At hint of that bleak gulf -- his last farewell;
Pining for peace, assurance, pause and rest,
Yet slave to what he loves past words to tell;
A foolish, fond old man, his bed-time nigh,
Who still at western window stays to win
A transient respite from the latening sky,
And scarce can bear it when the Sun goes in.
- Anthony Cronin
Sunday Independent
