Siegfried Sassoon War Poems

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC (1886 – 1967)

War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon

• A Childs Prayer
• For Morn, my dome of blue...
• A Letter Home
• HERE I'm sitting in the gloom...
• A Mystic as Soldier
• I lived my days apart...
• A Poplar and the Moon
• There stood a Poplar, tall and straight...
• A Subaltern
• HE turned to me with his kind, sleepy gaze...
• A Wanderer
• WHEN Watkin shifts the burden of his cares...
• A Whispered Tale
• I'd heard fool-heroes brag of where they'd been...
• A Working Party
• THREE hours ago he blundered up the trench...
• Absolution
• The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes...
• Alone
• I'VE listened: and all the sounds I heard...
• An Old French Poet
• WHEN in your sober mood my body have ye laid...
• Ancestors
• Behold these jewelled, merchant Ancestors...
• Arcady Unheeding
• Sherpherds go whistling on their way...
• Arms and the Man
• Young Croesus went to pay his call...
• At Carnoy
• DOWN in the hollow there's the whole Brigade...
• At Daybreak
• I listen for him through the rain...
• Before Day
• Come in this hour to set my spirit free...
• Before the Battle
• MUSIC of whispering trees...
• Blighters
• THE House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin...
• Blind
• HIS headstrong thoughts that once in eager strife...
• Companions
• Leave not your bough, my slender song-bird sweet...
• Conscripts
• FALL in, that awkward squad, and strike no more...
• David Cleek
• I CANNOT think that Death will press his claim...
• Daybreak in a Garden
• I HEARD the farm cocks crowing, loud, and faint, and thin...
• Dream-Forest
• WHERE sunshine flecks the green...
• Dryads
• WHEN meadows are grey with the morn...
• Enemies
• HE stood alone in some queer sunless place...
• France
• SHE triumphs, in the vivid green...
• Goblin Revel
• IN gold and grey, with fleering looks of sin...
• Golgotha
• THROUGH darkness curves a spume of falling flares...
• Haunted
• EVENING was in the wood, louring with storm...
• Heritage, The
• CRY out on Time that he may take away...
• In the Pink
• SO Davies wrote: This leaves me in the pink...
• Morning Express
• ALONG the wind-swept platform, pinched and white...
• Morning Glory
• IN this meadow starred with spring...
• Morning-Land
• OLD English songs, you bring to me...
• Night Piece
• YE hooded witches, baleful shapes that moan...
• Nimrod in September
• WHEN half the drowsy world's a-bed...
• Noah
• WHEN old Noah stared across the floods...
• October
• ACROSS the land a faint blue veil of mist...
• Old Huntsman, The
• I'VE never ceased to curse the day I signed...
• Secret Music
• I KEEP such music in my brain...
• South Wind
• WHERE have you been, South Wind, this May-day morning...
• Stand-to: Good Friday Morning
• I'D been on duty from two till four...
• Storm and Sunlight
• IN barns we crouch, and under stacks of straw...
• Stretcher Case
• HE woke; the clank and racket of the train...
• The Choral Union
• HE staggered in from night and frost and fog...
• The Death-Bed
• HE drowsed and was aware of silence heaped...
• The Dragon and the Undying
• ALL night the flares go up; the Dragon sings...
• The Hero
• JACK fell as he'd have wished, the Mother said...
• The Kiss
• TO these I turn, in these I trust...
• The Last Meeting
• BECAUSE the night was falling warm and still...
• The One-Legged Man
• PROPPED on a stick he viewed the August weald...
• The Redeemer
• DARKNESS: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep...
• The Road
• THE road is thronged with women; soldiers pass...
• The Tombstone-Maker
• HE primmed his loose red mouth and leaned his head...
• They
• THE Bishop tells us: When the boys come back...
• To His Dead Body
• WHEN roaring gloom surged inward and you cried...
• To My Brother
• GIVE me your hand, my brother, search my face...
• To Victory
• RETURN to greet me, colours that were my joy...
• To-day
• THIS is To-day, a child in white and blue...
• Tree and Sky
• LET my soul, a shining tree...
• Two Hundred Years After
• TRUDGING by Corbie Ridge one winter's night...
• Villon
• THEY threw me from the gates: my matted hair...
• When Im among a Blaze of Lights
• WHEN I'm among a blaze of lights...
• Wind in the Beechwood
• THE glorying forest shakes and swings with glancing...
• Wisdom
• WHEN Wisdom tells me that the world's a speck...
• Wonderment
• THEN a wind blew...

Sassoon was born in Matfield, Kent to a Jewish father and Protestant mother. He dropped out of University after a couple of years studying law and history, and spent his time, hunting, playing cricket and privately publishing some of his own poetry.

When he joined the military in 1914 (with the Sussex Yeomanry), he managed to break his arm whilst riding and had to remain in England. Whilst healing, his younger brother was killed at Gallipoli which hit Siegfried very hard. Later, in November 1915, Siegfried was sent to First Battalion in France becoming close friends with Robert Graves.

During his course of duty he single handedly captured a German trench in the Hindenburg Line, and often went out on night-raids and bombing patrols, which earned him the nickname ‘Mad Jack’, although his perceived bravery was driven by a manic courage and suicidal exploits. At the end of his convalescent leave, he threw his Military Cross into the river Mersey, and declined to return to duty. Encouraged by such friends as Bertrand Russell, he sent a letter to his commanding officer entitled, ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’.

Sassoon was fortunately not court-martialed over his declination to return to duty, instead the authorities declared he was unfit for service and sent him to a hospital in Edinburgh where he was treated for shell shock. It was here he met Wilfred Owen. A manuscript of Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ contains Sassoon’s handwritten amendments.