Nothing could be better than that "When I can never be alone." It is as apt as it is simple, worthy of any master.
So he yearns from the crowd, the mud, the din at the Front; and when he gets home on leave he walks up round the house where his friend used to live, and through the wood they often paced together, seeking for communion with him, though he is dead.
"Ah, but there was no need to call his name.
He was beside me now, as swift as light.
I knew him crushed to earth in scentless flowers,
And lifted in the rapture of dark pines.
'For now,' he said, 'my spirit has more eyes
Than heaven has stars; and they are lit by love.
My body is the magic of the world,
And dawn and sunset flame with my spilt blood.
My breath is the great wind and I am filled
With molten power and surge of the bright waves
That chant my doom along the ocean's edge. . . .'"
Thus sorrow opens the flood-gates of his eloquence. Yet though it less suggests abundance, Graves' simpler, briefer Not Dead is perhaps more effective.
"Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain
I know that David's with me here again.
All that is simple, happy, strong he is.
Caressingly I stroke
Rough bark of the friendly oak.
A brook goes babbling by: the voice is his.
Turf burns with pleasant smoke;
I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses;
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
Over the whole wood in a little while
Breaks his slow smile."
Here both young scoffers are in earnest. And though Graves succeeds best, one doubts whether he will task himself enough for greater things, whereas throughout Sassoon's book, with its glib impressionism playing with
