Motley and Other Poems

First published in 1918, this is a collection of lyrics rather than a narrative poem. Speakers include children, wanderers, and a figure in motley who addresses war, loss, and play; other pieces turn on moonlight, the sea, ghostly encounter, and the English countryside seen as slightly uncanny. Tone shifts from nursery hush to elegy. There is no continuous plot and no dramatic cast carried from poem to poem. The book is a gathering of short poems about dream, childhood, and the unseen, not a verse novel and not a selection of de la Mare's stories.

Quarter bound in dark blue cloth, white paper boards with a repeat pattern in blue-green and blue by Beck. Blue-green endleaves. Transparent plastic dust-jacket, no slipcase.