Page:Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination, Walter de la Mare, 1919.djvu/22

16 The theme of his poetry is the life of the mind, the senses, the feelings, life here and now, however impatient he may be with life's limitations. Its longing is for a state of consciousness wherein this kind of life shall be possible without exhaustion, disillusionment, or reaction. His words, too, are not symbols; they mean precisely what they say and only what they say. Whereas the words of the mystics of the childlike imagination, Blake and Vaughan and Coleridge, seem chiefly to mean what is left hinted at, rather than expressed. His world stands out sharp and distinct, like the towers and pinnacles of a city under the light and blue of the sky. Their world, old as Eden and remote as the stars, lies like the fabric of a vision, bathed in an unearthly atmosphere. He desired, loved, and praised things in themselves for their energy, vividness and naturalness; they for some inward and spiritual significance, for the reality of which they are the painted veil. They live in the quietude of their imaginations, in a far-away listening, and are most happy when at peace, if not passive. He is all activity, apprehensiveness.

Nothing pleases him so much as doing things, though, fretted that body and mind so soon weary, he may pine for sleep. His writing, whether in his poems, his "Webster," or in his letters, is itself