To analyze that stanza completely; to explain the shifting metres, the dragging-in of extraneous, prosaic details, the alternation of direction (known technically as change of pace), is to understand most of the new movements in poetry from the Parnassans to the Unanimistes. If Sassoon can utilize that knowledge in his civilian verse, he is well on the way to a new success. But first he must demobilize his intellect.
Have pity on the poets of this war! They have been feasted, adored, told that they were the representatives of the second renaissance. Since then eighteen months of peace have left them gasping in the face of a disillusionment worse than the boredom of the trenches. Let them rest for a time in quiet. If they are not bleached too soon by the calcium of lecture tours they may recover themselves. Till then have pity on them.
