Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same—and War's a bloody game. . . .
Have you forgotten yet?
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget."
With that poem, he delivered his own valedictory.
And now he turned back to the old subjects, but without the zest of ante-bellum days. He philosophized on Life, deciding that it was just the pictures dancing on the screen of a picture-show. He assured a childless woman that he Understood her. Since it is Sassoon speaking, one decides that he really believes these common-places; this fact, however, does not give them the lustre of originality.
What position is he preparing for himself in the new civilization? Certainly his sincerity has its value elsewhere than on the battlefield. Even in a world at peace there are common thoughts waiting for some one bold enough to express them, and there are abuses that stink to heaven as much as the corpses along the Bapaume Road. If he discovers them, he will write about them, awkwardly but directly, and once more the nightingales will tune their throats for a new song.
While he was splashing through the iambic mud of Flanders Sassoon acquired, somehow or other, the art of writing poetry; one makes note of the fact when reckoning up the chances in his favour. The value of some of his later war verse depends not at all on any polemic vigour. Perhaps his best lines are in a poem he calls Concert Party (Egyptian Base Camp):
"Jaded and gay, the ladies sing, and the chap in brown
Tilts his grey hat; jaunty and lean and pale,
He rattles the keys . . . some actor-bloke from town . . .
God send you home; and then a long, long trail;
I hear you calling me; and Dixieland. . . .
Sing slowly . . . now the chorus . . . one by one
We hear them, drink them; till the concert's done.
Silent, I watch the shadowy mass of soldiers stand.
Silent, they drift away, over the glimmering sand."
