Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/37

Rh 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.

Thus sorrow opens the flood-gates of his eloquence. Yet though it less suggests abundance, Graves' simpler, briefer Not Dead is perhaps more effective.

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 Rh