“The Spirit of Air” was published in Walter de la Mare’s collection The Veil and Other Poems (Constable & Company, 1921). Scholar and lawyer Adam Sedia, for the Society of Classical Poets, writes in his essay, “Neglected Gems: The Poetry of Walter de la Mare,” “What is this spirit, described at first so enticingly and at the end so hauntingly? She resembles Saint Paul’s description of a fallen spirit, the ‘the prince of the power of this air,’ that ‘worketh . . . in the desires of our flesh.’ (Ephesians 2:2–3.) Or she resembles the Sylphs of Paracelsus, air-spirits who resemble humans. Either way, she is not human and longs for the human sensation of love. This poem, then, is about the uniquely human feeling of love. The spirit, moving through the air, incorporeal and therefore deathless, yet longs to know love. The ‘thorns at her feet’ is the stabbing regret of never having known love, and the ‘darkness above’ is the knowledge that she never will know it. Humanity, therefore, occupies a unique place in the universe. Mortal it is, but it has the capacity to love and know love, which even the lovely air-spirits lack.”