Glory Of Women by Siegfried Sassoon
You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave, Or wounded in a mentionable place. You worship decorations; you believe That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace. You make us shells. You listen with delight, By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. You crown our distant ardours while we fight, And mourn our laurelled memories […]
France by Siegfried Sassoon
She triumphs, in the vivid green Where sun and quivering foliage meet; And in each soldier’s heart serene; When death stood near them they have seen The radiant forests where her feet Move on a breeze of silver sheen. And they are fortunate, who fight For gleaming landscapes swept and shafted And crowned by cloud […]
Fight to a Finish by Siegfried Sassoon
The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying, And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street To cheer the soldiers who’d refrained from dying, And hear the music of returning feet. ‘Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought, This moment is the finest.’ (So they thought.) Snapping their bayonets on to charge the […]
Fancy Dress by Siegfried Sassoon
Some Brave, awake in you to-night, Knocked at your heart: an eagle’s flight Stirred in the feather on your head. Your wide-set Indian eyes, alight Above high cheek-bones smeared with red, Unveiled cragg’d centuries, and led You, the snared wraith of bygone things— Wild ancestries of trackless Kings— Out of the past … So men […]
Falling Asleep by Siegfried Sassoon
Voices moving about in the quiet house: Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors: Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert. Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom Crowded with whispering trees; across the park A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells: And I know that the clouds are moving across the […]
Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon
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 … […]
Enemies by Siegfried Sassoon
He stood alone in some queer sunless place Where Armageddon ends. Perhaps he longed For days he might have lived; but his young face Gazed forth untroubled: and suddenly there thronged Round him the hulking Germans that I shot When for his death my brooding rage was hot. He stared at them, half-wondering; and then […]
Elegy by Siegfried Sassoon
Your dextrous wit will haunt us long Wounding our grief with yesterday. Your laughter is a broken song; And death has found you, kind and gay. We may forget those transient things That made your charm and our delight: But loyal love has deathless wings That rise and triumph out of night. So, in the […]
Editorial Impressions by Siegfried Sassoon
He seemed so certain ‘all was going well’, As he discussed the glorious time he’d had While visiting the trenches. ‘One can tell You’ve gathered big impressions!’ grinned the lad Who’d been severely wounded in the back In some wiped-out impossible Attack. ‘Impressions? Yes, most vivid! I am writing A little book called Europe on […]
Dryads by Siegfried Sassoon
When meadows are grey with the morn In the dusk of the woods it is night: The oak and the birch and the pine War with the glimmer of light. Dryads brown as the leaf Move in the gloom of the glade; When meadows are grey with the morn Dim night in the wood has […]
Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon
Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land, Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit […]
Dream-Forest by Siegfried Sassoon
Where sunshine flecks the green, Through towering woods my way Goes winding all the day. Scant are the flowers that bloom Beneath the bosky screen And cage of golden gloom. Few are the birds that call, Shrill-voiced and seldom seen. Where silence masters all, And light my footsteps fall, The whispering runnels only With blazing […]
Does It Matter? by Siegfried Sassoon
Does it matter?-losing your legs? For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. Does it matter?-losing you sight? There’s such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace […]
Died of Wounds by Siegfried Sassoon
His wet white face and miserable eyes Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs: But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell His troubled voice: he did the business well. The ward grew dark; but he was still complaining And calling out for ‘Dickie’. ‘Curse the Wood! ‘It’s time to go. O […]
Devotion to Duty by Siegfried Sassoon
I was near the King that day. I saw him snatch And briskly scan the G.H.Q. dispatch. Thick-voiced, he read it out. (His face was grave.) ‘This officer advanced with the first wave, ‘And when our first objective had been gained, ‘(Though wounded twice), reorganized the line: ‘The spirit of the troops was by his […]
Dead Musicians by Siegfried Sassoon
I From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, The substance of my dreams took fire. You built cathedrals in my heart, And lit my pinnacled desire. You were the ardour and the bright Procession of my thoughts toward prayer. You were the wrath of storm, the light On distant citadels aflare. II Great names, I cannot find […]
Daybreak In A Garden by Siegfried Sassoon
I heard the farm cocks crowing, loud, and faint, and thin, When hooded night was going and one clear planet winked: I heard shrill notes begin down the spired wood distinct, When cloudy shoals were chinked and gilt with fires of day. White-misted was the weald; the lawns were silver-grey; The lark his lonely field […]
David Cleek by Siegfried Sassoon
I cannot think that Death will press his claim To snuff you out or put you off your game: You’ll still contrive to play your steady round, Though hurricanes may sweep the dismal ground, And darkness blur the sandy-skirted green Where silence gulfs the shot you strike so clean. Saint Andrew guard your ghost, old […]
Counter-Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
We’d gained our first objective hours before While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke. Things seemed all right at first. We held their line, With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed, And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. The place was rotten with dead; green […]
Conscripts by Siegfried Sassoon
‘Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right! The luminous rich colours that you wore Have changed to hueless khaki in the night. Magic? What’s magic got to do with you? There’s no such thing! Blood’s red, and skies are blue.’ They gasped and sweated, marching up and […]
Concert Party by Siegfried Sassoon
(EGYPTIAN BASE CAMP) They are gathering round…. Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand, Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound— The jangle and throb of a piano … tum-ti-tum… Drawn by a lamp, they come Out of the glimmering lines of their tents, over the shuffling sand. O sing us the […]
Companions by Siegfried Sassoon
Leave not your bough, my slender song-bird sweet, But pipe me now your roundelay complete. Come, gentle breeze, and tarrying on your way, Whisper my trees what you have seen to-day. Stand, golden cloud, until my song be done, (For he’s too proud) before the face of the sun. So one did sing, and the […]
Butterflies by Siegfried Sassoon
Frail Travellers, deftly flickering over the flowers; O living flowers against the heedless blue Of summer days, what sends them dancing through This fiery-blossom’d revel of the hours? Theirs are the musing silences between The enraptured crying of shrill birds that make Heaven in the wood while summer dawns awake; And theirs the faintest winds […]
Break of Day by Siegfried Sassoon
There seemed a smell of autumn in the air At the bleak end of night; he shivered there In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay, Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, ‘To-day We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why, Zero’s at nine; how bloody […]
Bombardment by Siegfried Sassoon
Four days the earth was rent and torn By bursting steel, The houses fell about us; Three nights we dared not sleep, Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash Which meant our death. The fourth night every man, Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion, Slept, muttering and twitching, While the shells crashed overhead. The fifth day there […]
Blind by Siegfried Sassoon
His headstrong thoughts that once in eager strife Leapt sure from eye to brain and back to eye, Weaving unconscious tapestries of life, Are now thrust inward, dungeoned from the sky. And he who has watched his world and loved it all, Starless and old and blind, a sight for pity, With feeble steps and […]
Blighters by Siegfried Sassoon
The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din; ‘We’re sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!’ I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls, Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home, sweet Home’, And there’d be […]
Before the Battle by Siegfried Sassoon
Music of whispering trees Hushed by a broad-winged breeze Where shaken water gleams; And evening radiance falling With reedy bird-notes calling. O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams. I have no need to pray That fear may pass away; I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight That summons me from cool […]
Before Day by Siegfried Sassoon
Come in this hour to set my spirit free When earth is no more mine though night goes out, And stretching forth these arms I cannot be Lord of winged sunrise and dim Arcady: When fieldward boys far off with clack and shout From orchards scare the birds in sudden rout, Come, ere my heart […]
Battalion-Relief by Siegfried Sassoon
‘FALL in! Now get a move on.’ (Curse the rain.) We splash away along the straggling village, Out to the flat rich country, green with June… And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage, Blazing with splendour-patches. (Harvest soon, Up in the Line.) ‘Perhaps the War’ll be done ‘By Christmas-Day. Keep smiling then, old son.’ […]
Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death. You’d see me with my puffy petulant face, Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,” I’d say — “I used […]
Banishment by Siegfried Sassoon
I am banished from the patient men who fight They smote my heart to pity, built my pride. Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side, They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light. Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight They went arrayed in honour. But they died,— Not one by one: […]
Autumn by Siegfried Sassoon
October’s bellowing anger breaks and cleaves The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown Along the westering furnace flaring red. O martyred youth […]
Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun In the wild purple of the glow’ring sun, Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed With bombs and guns and shovels and […]
At Daybreak by Siegfried Sassoon
I listen for him through the rain, And in the dusk of starless hours I know that he will come again; Loth was he ever to forsake me: He comes with glimmering of flowers And stir of music to awake me. Spirit of purity, he stands As once he lived in charm and grace: I […]
At Carnoy by Siegfried Sassoon
Down in the hollow there’s the whole Brigade Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played, And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low. Crouched among thistle-tufts I’ve watched the glow Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade; And I’m content. To-morrow we must go To take […]
Arms and the Man by Siegfried Sassoon
Young Croesus went to pay his call On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall: And, though his wound was healed and mended, He hoped he’d get his leave extended. The waiting-room was dark and bare. He eyed a neat-framed notice there Above the fireplace hung to show Disabled heroes where to go For arms and legs; with […]
Arcady Unheeding by Siegfried Sassoon
Shepherds go whistling on their way In the spring season of the year; One watches weather-signs of day; One of his maid most dear Dreams; and they do not hear The birds that sing and sing; they do not see Wide wealds of blue beyond their windy lea, Nor blossoms red and white on every […]
Ancient History by Siegfried Sassoon
Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain, Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees; Huddling sharp chin on scarred and scraggy knees, He moaned and mumbled to his darkening brain; ‘He was the grandest of them all was Cain! ‘A lion laired in the hills, that none could tire: ‘Swift as a stag: a stallion of […]
Ancestors by Siegfried Sassoon
Behold these jewelled, merchant Ancestors, Foregathered in some chancellery of death; Calm, provident, discreet, they stroke their beards And move their faces slowly in the gloom, And barter monstrous wealth with speech subdued, Lustreless eyes and acquiescent lids. And oft in pauses of their conference, They listen to the measured breath of night’s Hushed sweep […]