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,