'It is very difficult to assess the poetry of De la Mare. Compared with Davies and Housman (for example), he is the most comprehensive poet of the three, and has definitely created a world of imagination; but Davies and Housman have a reality in their poems which is often absent from De la Mare, and in the optimism of the one and the fatalism of the other we are ever conscious of listening to human utterance, the warmth of the flesh is in the words.'