February 5.

A sleepless night.  Hateful return to the barn.  Such a fearful row that the corporals had to complain.  Punishments.

In the morning, on the march, and, in order to rest us, work to-night!

February 6.

MY DEAR BELOVED MOTHER,—­After the sleepless night in our billet, we had to supply a working-party all the following night.  So I have been sleeping up till the very moment of writing to you.  Sleep and Night are refuges which give life still one attraction.

Mother dear, I am living over again the lovely legend of Sarpedon; and that exquisite flower of Greek poetry really gives me comfort.  If you will read this passage of the Iliad in my beautiful translation by Lecomte de l’Isle, you will see that Zeus utters in regard to destiny certain words in which the divine and the eternal shine out as nobly as in the Christian Passion.  He suffers, and his fatherly heart undergoes a long battle, but finally he permits his son to die, and Hypnos and Thanatos are sent to gather up the beloved remains.

Hypnos—­that is Sleep.  To think that I should come to that, I for whom every waking hour was a waking joy, I for whom every moment of action was a thrill of pride.  I catch myself longing for the escape of Sleep from the tumult that besets me.  But the splendid Greek optimism shines out as in those vases at the Louvre.  By the two, Hypnos and Thanatos, Sarpedon is lifted to a life beyond his human death; and assuredly Sleep and Death do wonderfully magnify and continue our mortal fate.

Thanatos—­that is a mystery, and it is a terror only because the urgency of our transitory desires makes us misconceive the mystery.  But read over again the great peaceful words of Maeterlinck in his book on death, words ringing with compassion for our fears in the tremendous passage of mortality.

February 7.

MOST DEAR AND MOST BELOVED,—­I have your splendid letter of the first.  Please don’t hesitate to write what you think I would call mere chatter.  Your love and the absolute identity of our two hearts appear in all your letters.  And that is all I really care for.  Yet they tell me a thousand things that interest me too.

We are living through hours of heavy labour.  My rank gives me respite now and then; but for the men it means five nights at a time without sleep, and this repeatedly.

February 9.

Another breathing-space in which, almost at my last gasp, I get a brief peace.  The little reviving breath comes again.  I have had the good luck to be appointed corporal on guard in delightful quarters, where I am in command.  Perfect spring weather.  And what can I say of this Nature?  Never before have I so fully felt her amplitude of life.  Hours and seasons following one another surely, infallibly, unalterably, in unchanging unity; the looker-on has a glimpse of the immensity of the force that first set them afoot.