Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/39

Rh only daring and honest as these boys, but wise and profoundly gentle.

A shirt was clinging to Nichols' image, but Sassoon appears in full uniform, equal to every claim made by a day of action. Or is his smartness rather intellectual than practical? Derision hardly consists with might and main. Scorn abstracts itself and stands aside. The dapper mind is exasperated by fatigue and danger, and ever tries to reserve for self-realisation a few crumbs of time and energy. Shall we not picture this satirist better huddling under a greatcoat in some chilly dug-out? Refusing to drop asleep, he muses of his room in college, or holds a book he is too tired to read for a few seconds near his candle-end before putting it out. Preoccupied with to-day, he is of the best that it recognises in itself.

But no! How easy it is to be unjust! Another little book arrives, clearer-voiced; in it the self-conscious grin opens to a bitter laugh, while on its later pages the soul rebels, repents and aspires, with grace and power.

BANISHMENT

Rh