Peacock Pie

Ferrick Gray

Snippets
Volume 2, Issue 3 (May 29)

Peacock Pie
A Book of Rhymes
by Walter de la Mare

with embellishments
by C. Lovat Fraser

Constable & Company Ltd. 1924

Prefatory Remarks

⠀ I would imagine that most readers of poetry have come across the work of Walter de la Mare, at least I would hope this is the case. He is widely known for his stories and poetry, especially children’s poetry. Peacock Pie is one of his best collections, and has certainly been one of his most successful publications.

⠀ Peacock Pie is an extraordinary collection of poems, comprising eighty-four poems in eight categories. Many of these will be familiar to older readers. I recall his poem Five Eyes in elementary school (yes, quite a long time ago). We had to copy it into our anthology book, illustrate (embellish) it (see below) and then memorize the poem. We were made to recite the poem each morning before any other lessons until our teacher was satisfied with our efforts, then onto another. I would doubt that this procedure is carried out in schools now. If it is, I applaud them!

The Book

⠀ One may look at this edition and think that it is rather plain even after considering its age. It is quite a large book, quarter cloth and papered boards with a leather titling-label on the spine. This edition is also a limited edition issue with hand-cut pages and author signature. The pages are trimmed at the top (with gilded) edge.

Regarding the Embellishments by C. Lovat Fraser

⠀ Unfortunately, Fraser did not live to see his embellishments with de la Mare’s poems. He called them embellishments because he hated the term illustrations. He died in 1921, and it was not until three years later that both embellishments and poems would come together. Walter de la Mare’s tribute appeared in the 1924 publication.

A few new-old rhymes are included in this edition of Peacock Pie. The embellishments in it (and it was his own chosen word) were made by Claude Lovat Fraser in 1912—the rhymes themselves were first printed in 1913. They are now reproduced in company for the first time, and a happiness indeed it is to see them together; not only for the sake of the vivid pictures themselves, and all they give, but because he himself delighted in making them. I can remember, indeed, as vividly as if it were yesterday, talking to him as he sat at his board with his brush and his bright inks, and watching them positively leap into life on the paper.
W. d. l. M.
1924

⠀ This edition was also limited to two hundred and fifty numbered and signed copies.

Content Examples

⠀ Peacock Pie was written with the purpose of it being a book of poetry (rhymes) for children. However, it is still a favorite with older readers and the young at heart. It is filled with charming verses and many nursery-rime style poems. Despite its popularity, it is often criticized due to his use of darker or melancholic themes.

The Horseman — Page 3

⠀ The first poem in this collection is The Horseman. It is a short poem and has often been criticized for its placement in a children’s poetry book.

The Horseman

I heard a horseman
⠀ Ride over the hill;
The moon shone clear,
⠀ The night was still;
His helm was silver,
⠀ And pale was he;
And the horse he rode
⠀ Was of ivory.

⠀ What do you think? It’s all in the interpretation. Children will likely see something else in these verses to what an adult will. I believe that de la Mare was, on occasions, purposefully elusive with respect to the meaning of his poems. After all, the reader should be allowed to make their own decisions, children more so because youth, in general, have more active imaginations. With respect to The Horseman, who or what is it we see? A knight? A ghost? Perhaps, as people have complained about, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse. Death himself. Which child would make that connection?

Scansion

⠀ The scansion of The Horseman is relatively straightforward. It would be classified as iambic dimeter although some have described it as loose iambic. Even though the poem is only eight verses, I would disagree. The apparent looseness could only stem from the appearance of the three anapests (verses 2, 7 and 8) which are allowable substitutions. For the remainder we clearly find the iambs. The meter is too consistent to be termed loose.
⠀ Verses 1 and 5 involve hypermetric syllables which are not considered in the scansion. However, there may be some temptation to consider the last foot in each verse as the three-syllable amphibrach. This would make some happy.

Ĭ he͞ard | ă hōrse măn

Hĭs hēlm | wăs sīlvĕr

⠀ This is what we may call the feminine ending. This would be acceptable, yet there is the possibility that the last foot may be interpreted as bacchic rather than amphibrach. Naturally, this depends on the reading, but it is certainly possible and does not produce any glaring mispronunciation. However, it would be preferable to see the amphibrach mid-verse rather than at the end, since it acts more as a link or joiner between other feet.

Ĭ he͞ard | ă hōrse mān

Hĭs hēlm | wăs sīlvēr

⠀ The preferred scansion for this form of verse would be the use of hypermetric syllables, or denoting this as the es-ending (Wallace).

Foot	Number
iamb	13
anapest	3
Total	16

(Each verse has two feet and there are eight verses. Hence, sixteen feet in total. Hypermetrical syllables do not count in the scansion.)

Five Eyes — Page 90

⠀ As stated in my prefatory remarks, this was a poem I vividly remember from my early schooling. Young children may not make immediate sense of the title, but they would gradually work out the significance of five eyes. The last two verses are guaranteed to bring a smile to their faces. The imagery throughout is brilliant.

Five Eyes

In Hans’ old Mill his three black cats
Watch the bins for the thieving rats.
Whisker and claw, they crouch in the night,
Their five eyes smouldering green and bright:
Squeaks from the flour sacks, squeaks from where
The cold wind stirs on the empty stair,
Squeaking and scampering, everywhere.
Then down they pounce, now in, now out,
At whisking tail, and sniffing snout;
While lean old Hans he snores away
Till peep of light at break of day;
Then up he climbs to his creaking mill,
Out come his cats all grey with meal—
Jekkel, and Jessup, and one-eyed Jill.

Scansion

Foot	Number
iamb	44
anapest	7
trochee	5
Total	56

(Each verse has four feet and there are fourteen verses. Hence, there are fifty-six feet in total. There is a headless iamb in verse two. The technical terminology being that the verse is acephalous. Wallace suggested that when this occurs it should be simply referred to as anacrusis.)

⠀ As with much of his work, the scansion of this poem is straightforward. It predominantly iambic and would be best described as iambic tetrameter with a playful handful of anapests and trochees.

Final Remarks

⠀ Peacock Pie is a book for all ages, and although owning a signed copy is certainly a thrill, the full enjoyment of his rhymes is attainable in any of the different editions. All of his poems are playful and entertaining.
⠀ The scansion of poems is not important, de la Mare himself made note of this in his Come Hither.

(But) … complete tomes have been written on this subject; and the authors of them rarely agree. They add to one’s knowledge, but not much to one’s delight in the reading of poetry, and still less, I imagine, to the writing of it. In general, if you read a poem quietly over, first, to your head, then to your heart; most technical difficulties vanish like morning mist. (p.521)

⠀ My suggestion is to obtain a copy of this book and let most technical difficulties vanish like morning mist.

xiv lines

May 29, 2026

Vol.2 (03) - Peacock Pie