"€œPandemonium"€ by John Martin

The famous poem by Siegfried Sassoon describes the effect of the armistice at the end of the Great War:

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

Drifted away … O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

It could not last, of course, and did not last, to put it mildly. It is the complaining that will never be done.