A Poplar and the Moon
There stood a Poplar, tall and straight;
The fair, round moon, uprisen late,
Made the long shadow on the grass
A ghostly bridge ‘twixt heaven and me.
But May, with slumbrous nights, must pass;
And blustering winds will strip the tree.
And I’ve no magic to express
The moment of that loveliness;
So from these words you’ll never guess
The stars and lilies I could see.
The General
“Good morning; good morning” the General said when we met last week on our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead, and we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine. “He’s a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack as they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. But he did for them both by his plan of attack. A poem by Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon
Aftermath
Have you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at a 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 to 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.
By Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon
Night on the Convoy(Alexandria-Marseilles)
Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck
A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black,
The lean Destroyers, level with our track,
Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way
Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.
One sentry by the davits, in the gloom
Stands mute: the boat heaves onward through the night.
Shrouded is every chink of cabined light:
And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom
And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders…doom.
Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh;
And slowly growing used to groping dark,
I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length,
Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength-
Blanketed soldiers sleeping. In the stark
Danger of life at war, they lie so still,
All prostrate and defenceless, head by head…
And I remember Arras, and that hill
Where dumb with pain I stumbled among the dead.
We are going home. The troop-ship, in a thrill
Of fiery-chamber’d anguish, throbs and rolls.
We are going home…victims…three thousand souls.
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon's poem.
‘Blighters’
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 no more jokes in music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
A Siegfried Sassoon Poem
“Suicide In The Trenches”
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Siegfried Sassoon
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