“I'm writing a poem on Peace,” said Reginald, emerging
from a sweeping operation through a tin of mixed biscuits,
in whose depths a macaroon or two might yet be lurking.
“Something of the kind seems to have been attempted
already,” said the Other.
“Oh, I know; but I may never have the chance again.
Besides, I've got a new fountain pen. I don't pretend to
have gone on any very original lines; in writing about Peace
the thing is to say what everybody else is saying, only to
say it better. It begins with the usual ornithological
emotion:
`When the widgeon westward winging
Heard the folk Vereeniginging,
Heard the shouting and the singing---' “
“Vereeniginging is good, but why widgeon?”
“Why not? Anything that winged westward would naturally
begin with a w.”
“Need it wing westward?”
“The bird must go somewhere. You wouldn't have it hang
around and look foolish. Then I've brought in something
about the heedless hartebeest galloping over the deserted
veldt.”
“Of course you know it's practically extinct in those
regions?”
“I can't help that, it gallops so nicely. I make it have
all sorts of unexpected yearnings:
'Mother, may I go and maffick,
Tear around and hinder traffic?'
Of course you'll say there would be no traffic worth
bothering about on the bare and sun-scorched veldt, but
there's no other word that rhymes with maffick.”
“Seraphic?”
Reginald considered. “It might do, but I've got a lot
about angels later on. You must have angels in a Peace
poem; I know dreadfully little about their habits.”
“They can do unexpected things, like the hartebeest.”
“Of course. Then I turn on London, the City of Dreadful
Nocturnes, resonant with hymns of joy and thanksgiving:
'And the sleeper, eye unlidding,
Heard a voice for ever bidding
Much farewell to Dolly Gray;
Turning weary on his truckle-
Bed he heard the honeysuckle
Lauded in apiarian lay.'
Longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that.”
“I agree with you.”
“I wish you wouldn't. I've a sweet temper, but I can't
stand being agreed with. And I'm so worried about the
aasvogel.”
Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now
presented an unattractive array of rejected cracknels.
“I believe,” he murmured , “if I could find a woman
with an unsatisfied craving for cracknels, I should marry
her.”
“What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?” asked the Other
sympathetically.
“Oh, simply that there's no rhyme for it. I thought
about it all the time I was dressing---it's dreadfully bad
for one to think whilst one's dressing---and all lunch-time,
and I'm still hung up over it. I feel like those
unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable
notoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in
the most crowded thoroughfares. I'm afraid I shall have to
drop the aasvogel, and it did give such lovely local colour
to the thing.”
“Still you've got the heedless hartebeest.”
“And quite a decorative bit of moral admonition---when
you've worried the meaning out---
'Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares,
And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.'
Mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares.
There's lots more about the blessings of Peace, shall I go
on reading it?”
“If I must make a choice, I think I would rather they
went on with the war.”