Page:Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination, Walter de la Mare, 1919.djvu/37

Rh We don't often meet people in this world who instantly recall the Golden Age and remind us that the Greek sculptors went to Life for their models. Even Henry James, in his essay on Brooke, not less in its translucency than five fathoms deep, seems to pause Prospero-like before that Ariel whom he had suddenly encountered in the beautiful setting of the Cambridge "backs." With the lingering gusto which an epicure lavishes on a rare old vintage he tastes—tastes again, and all but hesitates for words to express his precise and ultimate reaction; and to suggest that Henry James was ever at a loss for words is to insinuate that the Mississippi might run short of water.

One was just happy in Brooke's company. Guiltily one eyed his gold. Here in laughing, talking actuality was a living witness of what humanity might arrive at when—well, when we tread the streets of Utopia. Happiness is catching. No doubt this admiration sometimes elated him, without his being aware of it. At times, in certain company, it must have been a positive vexation. Admiration is a dense medium though which to press to what treasure may be beyond. Poets, indeed, unlike children, and for their own sake if not for that of others, should be heard and not seen; and it must have