Blending in a trance--
Eternity's to-morrow
In this half-way house of France.

Sounds of whispered talking,
Laboured indrawn breath;
Then like a young girl walking
The dear familiar Death.




I

THE ROAD TO BLIGHTY


I am in hospital in London, lying between clean white sheets and
feeling, for the first time in months, clean all over. At the end of
the ward there is a swinging door; if I listen intently in the
intervals when the gramophone isn't playing, I can hear the sound of
bath-water running--running in a reckless kind of fashion as if it
didn't care how much was wasted. To me, so recently out of the
fighting and so short a time in Blighty, it seems the finest music in
the world. For the sheer luxury of the contrast I close my eyes
against the July sunlight and imagine myself back in one of those
narrow dug-outs where it isn't the thing to undress because the row
may start at any minute.

Out there in France we used to tell one another fairy-tales of how we