War Poems

Siegfried Sassoon

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780486826820
• eBook ISBN: 9780486834849
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: World War I
• Index: Literature

At the dawn of World War I, Siegfried Sassoon exchanged his pursuits of cricket, fox-hunting, and romantic verse for army life amid the muddy trenches of France. The first English soldier-poet to achieve notoriety as an opponent of the war, he ranks among the conflict's most critical poetic voices. This collection of his epigrammatic and satirical poetry conveys the shocking brutality and pointlessness of the Great War.
Many of these poems were written in the hospital while Sassoon recovered from wounds he received in battle. Their violence and graphic detail shocked readers, impressing upon them the horrors of trench warfare and the foot soldier's weariness of the never-ending struggle. "The dynamic quality of his war poems," observed the Times Literary Supplement, "was due to the intensity of feeling which underlay their cynicism." More than 80 of Sassoon's moving works are featured in this volume, including "Counter-Attack," "They," "The General," and "Base Details."

FIRST LINES INDEX

All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings	3
At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun	51
Because the night was falling warm and still	38
Come down from heaven to meet me when my breath	78
Dark clouds are smouldering into red	53
Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep	10
Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom	46
Does it matter?—losing your leg? . . .	60
Down in the hollow there’s the whole Brigade	18
Evening was in the wood, louring with storm	33
Everyone suddenly burst out singing	102
“Fall in! Now get a move on!” (Curse the rain.)	91
“Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more	30
From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart	85
Give me your hand, my brother, search my face	2
God with a Roll of Honour in His hand	67
“Good-morning; good-morning!” the General said	58
Groping along the tunnel, step by step	49
Have you forgotten yet? . . .	101
“He’d never seen so many dead before.”	54
He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped	36
He primmed his loose red mouth, and leaned his head	25
He seemed so certain “all was going well,”	62
He stood alone in some queer sunless place	24
He turned to me with his kind, sleepy gaze	12
He woke: the clank and racket of the train	29
He’s got a Blighty wound. He’s safe; and then	65
Here I’m sitting in the gloom	43
His wet, white face and miserable eyes	27
Hullo! here’s my platoon, the lot I had last year	55
I am banished from the patient men who fight	74
I found him in the guard-room at the Base	59
I keep such music in my brain	32
I knew a simple soldier boy	63
I lived my days apart	8
I stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still	93
I was near the King that day. I saw him snatch	104
I’d been on duty from two till four	22
I’d heard fool-heroes brag of where they’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Absolution
• Brothers
• The Dragon and the Undying
• France
• To Victory
• When I’m among a Blaze of Lights
• Golgotha
• A Mystic As Soldier
• The Kiss
• The Redeemer
• A Subaltern
• “In the Pink”
• A Working Party
• A Whispered Tale
• “Blighters”
• At Carnoy
• To His Dead Body
• Two Hundred Years After
• “They”
• Stand-To: Good Friday Morning
• The One-Legged Man
• Enemies
• The Tombstone-Maker
• Arms and the Man
• Died of Wounds
• The Hero
• Stretcher Case
• Conscripts
• The Road
• Secret Music
• Haunted
• Before the Battle
• The Death-Bed
• The Last Meeting
• A Letter Home
• Prelude: The Troops
• Counter-Attack
• The Rear-Guard
• Wirers
• Attack
• Dreamers
• How to Die
• The Effect
• Twelve Months After
• The Fathers
• Base Details
• The General
• Lamentations
• Does It Matter?
• Fight to a Finish
• Editorial Impressions
• Suicide in the Trenches
• Glory of Women
• Their Frailty
• The Hawthorn Tree
• The Investiture
• Trench Duty
• Break of Day
• To Any Dead Officer
• Sick Leave
• Banishment
• Song-Books of the War
• Thrushes
• Autumn
• Invocation
• Repression of War Experience
• The Triumph
• Survivors
• Joy-Bells
• Remorse
• Dead Musicians
• The Dream
• In Barracks
• Together
• Battalion Relief
• The Dug-Out
• I Stood with the Dead
• In an Underground Dressing-Station
• Atrocities
• Return of the Heroes
• Concert Party
• Night on the Convoy
• Reconciliation
• Memorial Tablet
• Aftermath
• Everyone Sang
• Memory
• Devotion to Duty
• Titles Index
• First Lines Index