jest, just as not to have laughed puts our judgment out of court. But taste, like the soldier, must face all odds and strive to remain honest and delicate, in spite of the natural man.
Captain Robert Graves' humour attains a kind and degree of success similar to that of Robert Nichols' effort after beauty—glimpses and promises of felicity but not much more; and he also finds a rival in Siegfried Sassoon, who sounds a like note of fantastic levity in his Noah and Policeman. This third star in the tiny constellation has on the whole the most definite character, a ray whose spectrum is more nearly unique. Many of his poems deal with the childhood he has so recently quit, in its home rather than its school side; he seems to remain constantly aware of his knickerbocker self and of the family he made one of. Nonsense and laughter are still the happy relief from a probably more mature daily habit, which his rank might seem to infer—relief even after the most terrible experiences of trench life.
"Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever: 'Cat! . . . Cat! . . . Cat! . . .'
········
Morphia-drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day—
With a voice cruel and flat,
'Cat! . . . Cat! . . . Cat!' he said. 'Cat! . . . Cat! . . .'"
