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.