When Susan's work was done she'd sit, With one fat guttering candle lit, And window opened wide to win The sweet night air to enter in; There, with a thumb to keep her place She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face, Her mild eyes gliding very slow Across the letters to and fro, While wagged the guttering candle flame In the wind that through the window came. And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, "You silly souls, to act this way!" And never a sound from night I'd hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great glasses bent on me She'd glance into reality; And shake her round old silvery head, With--"You!--I thought you was in bed!"-- Only to tilt her book again, And rooted in Romance remain. I am afraid that Rupert Brooke could not have written a poem like _Old Susan_; he would have made her ridiculous and contemptible; he would have accentuated physical defects so that she would have been a repugnant, even an offensive, figure. But Mr. De La Mare has the power--possessed in the supreme degree by J. M. Barrie--of taking just such a person as Old Susan, living in a world of romance, and making us smile with no trace of contempt and with no descent to pity. One who can do this loves his fellow-men. Poems like _Old Susan_ prepare us for one of the most happy exhibitions of Mr. De La Mare's talent--his verses written for and about children. Every household ought to have that delightful quarto, delightfully and abundantly illustrated, called _Peacock Pie: A Book of Rhymes. With Illustrations by W. Heath Robinson_. There is a picture for each poem, and the combination demands and will obtain an unconditional surrender. If the poetry of James Flecker and Walter De La Mare live after them, it will not be because of sensational qualities, in matter or in manner. Fancy is bred either in the heart or in the head--and the best poetry should touch either one or the other or both. Mr. De La Mare owes his present eminence simply to merit--his endeavour has been to write just as well as he possibly could. His limit has been downward, not upward. He may occasionally strike over the heads of his audience, for his aim is never low.