The transcience of beauty: Walter de La Mare's poem "An Epitaph"
Autograph letter signed and autograph poem signed.
Small 8vo. Together 2 pp.
€ 800.00
Beautiful letter to a collector named Frank Pelissier with the poem originally enclosed: "I am venturing to send you a poem as well as a signature if you would be so kind as to accept it with my best regards: it's a little less bare than the others alone. May all good fortune attend you! - & this is the wish of the tiny drop of French blood that darts about in my family - not to speak of the English".
"An Epitaph" was first published in the 1912 anthology "The Listeners and Other Poems": "Here lies a most beautiful Lady; / Light of heart & step was she; / I think she was the most beautiful lady / that ever was in the West Country: / But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; / However rare - rare it be, / And when I crumble, who will remember / This lady of the West Country?".
On stationery with blindstamped address. With staple holes and a collector's notes in pencil.
