In Flanders Fields | Page 9

a life time. This
explains why editors write so little. In the end,
out of mere good
nature, or seeing the futility of it all,
they contribute their words to
contributors and write no more.
The volume of verse as here printed is small. The volume might be
enlarged; it would not be improved. To estimate the value and institute
a comparison of those herein set forth would be a congenial but useless

task, which may well be left to those whose profession it is to offer
instruction to the young. To say that "In Flanders Fields" is not the best
would involve one in controversy. It did give expression to a mood
which at the time was universal, and will remain as a permanent record
when the mood is passed away.
The poem was first called to my attention by a Sapper officer, then
Major, now Brigadier. He brought the paper in his hand from his billet
in Dranoutre. It was printed on page 468, and Mr. `Punch' will be glad
to be told that, in his annual index, in the issue of December 29th, 1915,
he has mispelled the author's name, which is perhaps the only mistake
he ever made. This officer could himself weave the sonnet with deft
fingers, and he pointed out many deep things. It is to the sappers
the
army always goes for "technical material".
The poem, he explained, consists of thirteen lines in iambic tetrameter
and two lines of two iambics each; in all, one line more
than the
sonnet's count. There are two rhymes only, since the short lines must be
considered blank, and are, in fact, identical. But it is a difficult mode. It
is true, he allowed, that the octet of the sonnet has only two rhymes, but
these recur only four times,
and the liberty of the sestet tempers its
despotism, --
which I thought a pretty phrase. He pointed out the
dangers inherent in a restricted rhyme, and cited the case of Browning,
the great rhymster, who was prone to resort to any rhyme, and
frequently ended in absurdity, finding it easier to make a new verse
than to make an end.
At great length -- but the December evenings in Flanders are long, how
long, O Lord! -- this Sapper officer demonstrated the skill with which
the rhymes are chosen. They are vocalized.
Consonant endings would
spoil the whole effect. They reiterate O and I, not the O of pain and the
Ay of assent, but the O of wonder, of hope, of aspiration; and the I of
personal pride, of jealous immortality, of the Ego against the Universe.
They are, he went on to expound, a recurrence of the ancient question:
"How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come?" "How
shall I bear my light across?" and of the defiant cry: "If Christ be not
raised, then is our faith vain."

The theme has three phases: the first a calm, a deadly calm, opening
statement in five lines; the second in four lines,
an explanation, a
regret, a reiteration of the first; the third, without preliminary crescendo,
breaking out into passionate adjuration in vivid metaphor, a poignant
appeal which is at once a blessing and a curse. In the closing line is a
satisfying return to the first phase, -- and the thing is done. One is so
often reminded of the poverty of men's invention, their best being so
incomplete, their greatest so trivial, that one welcomes what -- this
Sapper officer surmised -- may become a new and fixed mode of
expression in verse.
As to the theme itself -- I am using his words: what is his is mine; what
is mine is his -- the interest is universal. The dead, still conscious,
fallen in a noble cause, see their graves overblown in a riot of poppy
bloom. The poppy is the emblem of sleep. The dead desire to sleep
undisturbed, but yet curiously take an interest in passing events. They
regret that they have not been permitted to live out their life to its
normal end. They call on the living to finish their task, else they shall
not sink into that complete repose which they desire, in spite of the
balm of the poppy. Formalists may protest that the poet is not sincere,
since it is the seed and not the flower that produces sleep. They might
as well object that the poet has no right to impersonate the dead. We
common folk know better. We know that in personating the dear dead,
and calling in bell-like tones on the inarticulate living,
the poet shall
be enabled to break the lightnings of the Beast, and thereby he, being
himself, alas! dead, yet speaketh; and shall speak, to ones and twos and
a host. As it is written in