Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/136

"Oh, Mother! how I wish I was an angel!"

"Darling! what makes you say that?"

"Oh, because then, Mother, I could drop bombs on the Germans."

The poets having indicated that they were going to take a few moments off, the words were free to stand at ease also. They did so with a great sigh of relief, especially one whom I recognised by his intense weariness and also by the martial glow on his features, his muddied and torn clothes and the bandage round his head.

"You're war,'" I said, crossing over to speak to him.

"Yes," he replied, "I'm 'war,' and I'm very tired."

"They're sweating you?" I asked.

"Horribly," he replied. "In whatever they're writing about just now, both poets and song-writers, they drag me in, and they will end lines with me. Just to occur somewhere and be done with I shouldn't so much mind; but they feel in honour bound to provide me with a rhyme. Still," he added meditatively," there are compensations."

"How?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "I find myself with more congenial companions than I used to have. In the old days, when I wasn't sung at all, but was used more or less academically, I often found myself arm-in-arm with 'star' or 'far' or 'scar,' and I never really got on with them. We didn't agree. There was something wrong. But now I get better associates; 'roar,' for example, is a certainty in one verse. In fact I don't mind admitting I'm rather tired of 'roar,' true friends as we are.

"But I can see the poor young poetical fellows' difficulty; and, after all, I do roar, don't I? Just as my old friend 'battle' here"—I bowed to his companion—"is attached to 'rattle.'"

"Of course," he went on, "I'm luckier than 'battle' really, because I do get a few other fellows to walk with, such as 'corps'—very often—and 'before' and—far too often—'gore'; but 'battle' is tied up to 'rattle' for the rest of his life. They're inseparable—'battle' and 'rattle.' Directly you see one you know that the other is only a few words away. We call them the Siamese Twins."

I laughed sympathetically.

"There's 'cattle,'" I said, remembering 'The War-song of Dinas Vawr.'"

"No use just now," said 'war.' "'Rattle' is the only rhyme at the moment; just as General French has his favourite one, and that's 'trench.' If 'battle' and 'rattle' are like the Siamese Twins, 'French' and 'trench' are like Castor and Pollux. Now and then the Commander-in-chief makes the enemy 'blench,' but for one 'blench' you get a thousand 'trenches.' No, I feel very sorry, I can tell you, for some of these words condemned to such a monotony of conjunction; and really I oughtn't to complain. And to have got rid of 'star' is something."

I shook him by the hand.

"But there's one thing," he added, "I do object to, which not even poor old 'battle' has to bear, and that's being forced to march with a rhyme that isn't all there. I have to do that far too often; and it's annoying."

I asked him to explain.

"Well," he said, "those poets who look forward are too fond of linking me to 'o'er'—when it's 'o'er,' don't you know (they mean 'over'). That's a little humiliating, I always think. You wouldn't like constantly going about with a man who'd lost his collar, would you?"

I said that I shouldn't.

"Well, it's like that," he said, "I am not sure that I would not prefer 'star' to that, or 'scar,' after all. They, at any rate, meant well and were gentlemanly. But 'o'er'? No.

The new book for schools: Kaiser: De Bello Jellicoe."