Siegfried Sassoon Poems
"Attack"
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 battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to, meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
"Aftermath"
Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have
rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while
at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap
in your mind has filled with
thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit
heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share
of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the
same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the
slain of the War that you'll never forget.
Do you remember the dark
months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and
wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats;
and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front
of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming,
dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask,
'Is it all going to happen again?'
Do you remember that hour of
din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind
compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed
and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the
stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling
heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once
were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the
green of the spring that you'll never forget.
"Bombardment"
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 came a hush;
We left our holes
And looked above the wreckage of the earth
To where the white clouds moved in silent lines
Across the untroubled blue.
"Died of Wounds"
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 Christ, and what’s the good?
‘We’ll never take it, and it’s always raining.’
I wondered where he’d been; then heard him shout,
‘They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don’t go out...
I fell asleep ... Next morning he was dead;
And some Slight Wound lay smiling on the bed.
Source:
From Siegfried Sassoon, Collected Poems (New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1918)