Siegfried Sassoon

You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented,
Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me why Of my old, silly sweetness I've repented— My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry
You are aware that once I sought the Grail,
Riding in ar...

The boys came back
Bands played and flags were flying, And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street To cheer the soldiers who’d refrained from dying, And hear the music of returning feet
‘Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought,...

Quietly they set their burden down: he
To grin; moaned; moved his head from side to side
He gripped the stretcher; stiffened; glared; and screamed,"O put my leg down, doctor, do
" (He'd gotA bullet in his ankle; and he'd been

I knew a simple soldier
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark

Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;

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 f...

Does it matter
-losing your legs
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you

To these I turn, in these I trust;
Brother Lead and Sister Steel
To his blind power I make appeal;
I guard her beauty clean from rust

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake, Out in the trench with three hours’ watch to take, I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light
Hark

"I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldi...

I found him in the guard-room at the Base
From the blind darkness I had heard his crying And blundered in
With puzzled, patient face A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest
And, all...

Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows Each flash and spouting crash,—each instant lit When gloom reveals the streaming rain
He goes Heavily, blindly on
And, while he blunders, "...