Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MCwas an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth8 September 1886
His most rational response to my attempts at drawing him out about literature and art was 'I adore italics, don't you?'
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 of death.
I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.
The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.
And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of May, And touched the nodding peony flowers to bid them waken.
And when the war is done and youth stone dead, I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
The visionless officialized fatuityThat once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity.
Across the land a faint blue veil of mist Seems hung; the woods wear yet arrayment sober Till frost shall make them flame; silent and whist The drooping cherry orchards of October Like mournful pennons hang their shriveling leaves Russet and orange: all things now decay; Long since ye garnered in your autumn sheaves, And sad the robins pipe at set of day.
And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
Life for the majority of the population. Is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds. Culminating in a cheap funeral.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers.
Who's this—alone with stone and sky? It's only my old dog and I— It's only him; it's only me; Alone with stone and grass and tree. What share we most—we two together? Smells, and awareness of the weather. What is it makes us more than dust? My trust in him; in me his trust.