Walter de la Mare's Come Hither opens not with a poem but with a prose frame: 'The Story of this Book,' in which a boy sets out for a place called East Dene, following his mother's cryptic advice to 'follow your small nose.' The narrative describes his climb to a hilltop, where he looks down on 'grey walls and chimneys as if out of a dream.' This framing device—a journey toward a half-remembered house—establishes a structure of discovery that recurs throughout the anthology. The table of contents reveals a deliberate arrangement: sections move from 'Morning and May' through 'War,' 'Dance, Music and Bells,' and 'Evening and Dream,' suggesting a day's cycle or a life's passage. The compiler's hand is visible in the grouping, which pairs poems by mood and image rather than by author or chronology.

A Journey Framed in Prose

The prose introduction is not a mere preface; it is a narrative that mirrors the anthology's structure. The boy's 'rovings and ramblings' echo the wandering quality of many poems. The description of the house as 'familiar' yet seen 'as if out of a dream' anticipates the anthology's blend of the known and the strange. De la Mare uses this frame to position the reader as a fellow traveler. The mother's phrase 'all in very good time' suggests a patience that the anthology itself demands: poems are not to be rushed but encountered as the boy encounters the house—gradually, with attention to detail. This prose frame reappears only in the opening, leaving the poems to stand on their own, but its imagery of hills, dew, and mist sets a tone of quiet observation that carries into the verse selections.

Recurring Images of Silence and Stillness

Several poems in the anthology dwell on silence and stillness, often with a paradoxical intensity. Thomas Hood's 'Silence' distinguishes between 'a silence where hath been no sound' and a deeper silence 'where no sound may be,' locating the latter in 'green ruins' and 'desolate walls.' This poem appears late in the collection, near Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan,' which also describes a 'sunless sea' and 'caverns measureless to man.' The juxtaposition is telling: both poems treat silence as a presence, not an absence. Another poem, 'Lost Love,' describes a grief-stricken man whose senses become unnaturally acute: he can 'watch a grass or leaf / Every instant grow' and hear 'the groan of ants.' This hyper-awareness of tiny sounds—'drinking sound of grass, / Worm talk'—turns silence into a canvas for minute auditory detail. De la Mare's arrangement highlights these contrasts, moving from Hood's abstract meditation to Coleridge's visionary landscape to a portrait of grief that makes silence audible.

Movement Between Worlds: The Section 'Far'

The section titled 'Far' (page 289) gathers poems about distant places, both real and imagined. Gilbert Sheldon's poem (numbered 403) describes 'gum-trees down by the creek' and 'pits by the dry, dead river' where 'diggers won their gold.' The poem traces a landscape shaped by human labor and abandonment: 'a circle traced in the grass, / A hearthstone long a-cold.' This sense of a vanished past—'the trail of the pioneers'—is echoed in the section's other poems, which often invoke travel, exploration, or memory. The section's position in the anthology, after 'Like Stars upon some Gloomy Grove' and before 'Lily Bright and Shine-a,' suggests a deliberate arc: the reader moves from domestic or familiar settings toward the remote, then back toward the intimate. The poems in 'Far' share a tone of elegy, as if distance itself is a form of loss.

The Supernatural and the Everyday

De la Mare includes a section titled 'Ouph: Elphin: Fay' (page 117), which groups poems about fairies, spirits, and other supernatural beings. This section sits between 'Beasts of the Field: Fowls of the Air' and 'Summer: Greenwood: Solitude,' placing the magical alongside the natural. The poems in this section often treat the supernatural as a matter-of-fact presence, not a fantasy. For example, 'Kubla Khan' (placed later, in 'Old Tales and Balladry') describes a 'woman wailing for her demon-lover' and a 'damsel with a dulcimer' seen 'in a vision.' The anthology does not separate these from more realistic poems; instead, it allows the supernatural to appear as one mode of experience among others. This blending is characteristic of de la Mare's editorial approach: he treats the boundary between the real and the imagined as porous, inviting readers to move between them without warning.

Readers approaching Come Hither may find it useful to read the prose introduction first, then browse the sections in order, noting how poems echo one another across the anthology's divisions. The table of contents offers a map of de la Mare's thematic landscape, but the real pleasure lies in the unexpected connections—a poem about silence placed near one about a pleasure-dome, a grief-stricken man hearing the 'clashing jaws of moth.' The anthology rewards slow, attentive reading, allowing its recurring images of travel, stillness, and the supernatural to accumulate meaning.