WALTER DE LA MARE
De La Mare was an important early influence on Sassoon’s poetry, and Sassoon found his work a great comfort during the war. Indeed, on June 3rd 1918, after reading some of De La Mare’s poems while sitting by some French graves, he wrote in his notebook the short poem ‘On reading de la Mare’s poems after the day’s work’. Their work appeared alongside each other in the 1916-17 and 1918-19 volumes of Eddie Marsh’s ‘Georgian Poetry’, and Sassoon’s first visit to De La Mare in Hert - fordshire shortly followed the publication of the 1919 volume. Their friendship grew in the post-war years, and in his 1924 poem ‘Cary Castle,’ inspired by a visit with De La Mare, he imagined them as “two poets at the edge of time”. When a plaque to De La Mare was installed at St. Paul’s after his death, it was Sassoon who unveiled it, and wore for the occasion Lascelles Abercrombie’s over- coat, in true nostalgia for the days of the Georgian poets.
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