Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    War Poems
    War Poems
    War Poems
    Ebook136 pages1 hour

    War Poems

    By Siegfried Sassoon

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    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."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateSep 12, 2018
    ISBN9780486834849
    War Poems
    Author

    Siegfried Sassoon

    Siegfried Sassoon was born in 1886 and educated at Clare College, Cambridge. He served in the trenches during the First World War, where he began to write the poems for which he is remembered. Despatched as ‘shell-shocked’ to hospital, he organised public protest against the war. His poetry initially met with little response, but his reputation grew steadily in the following decades.

    Read more from Siegfried Sassoon

    Related to War Poems

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Read a (Love) Letter From Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne

      Mar 16, 2017

      167 years ago today, Ticknor, Reed & Fields published The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel of repentance and slut-shaming. But actually, this isn’t about The Scarlet Letter—it’s about one of the most fascinating friendships in lite

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Hisham Matar

      Dec 18, 2018

      The fact that this isn’t recognized for what it is, a magisterial work and a 20th-century masterpiece, makes me even more anxious about our times. The post A Year in Reading: Hisham Matar appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Richard Wilbur, Renowned American Poet And Translator, Dies At 96

      Oct 16, 2017

      His commitment to traditional forms, with tight patterns and taut construction, stood out among his contemporaries. He said his craft was finding order in pain and chaos — not creating it.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bloomsberries At War PAUL BAILEY Writing In The Dark: Bloomsbury, The Blitz, And Horizon Magazine

      Jul 28, 2021

      Bloomsbury £20 The subtitle of Will Loxley’s first book does not sound especially adventurous or challenging. Haven’t we, both readers and writers, been here before? It’s not entirely fanciful to imagine a bookshop that sells nothing but biographies,

      3 min read

    • Article

      “The Dead Will Think The Living Are Worth It”

      Jul 1, 2019

      1. In 2017 Copper Canyon Press reissued W.S. Merwin’s book of poems The Lice to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication. The news caught my attention because I have a personal attachment to this collection. I bought it at a garage s

      13 min read

    • Article

      A Shropshire Lad

      Nov 9, 2022

      A Shropshire Lad
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jul 8, 2021

      Books
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Soldier

      Nov 10, 2021

      The Soldier
      2 min read

    • Article

      Playing The Hero

      Feb 21, 2023

      On his recital tour of Britain in the early 1840s, that same historic tour when in London he first coined the term ‘recitals’ for his public performances, Liszt made a detour to visit Lord Byron’s ancestral home, Newstead Abbey near Nottingham. His r

      5 min read

    • Article

      Playing The Hero

      Feb 21, 2023

      On his recital tour of Britain in the early 1840s, that same historic tour when in London he first coined the term ‘recitals’ for his public performances, Liszt made a detour to visit Lord Byron’s ancestral home, Newstead Abbey near Nottingham. His r

      5 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Apple

      Nov 24, 2021

      Alex Danchev with Sarah Whitfield (Profile, £30) IN 1946, René Magritte painted his most famous picture, The Son of Man, which shows a bowler-hatted figure in a black overcoat standing ramrod straight in front of a featureless background of sky and

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Poetry And Protest Of Siegfried Sassoon

      Jun 10, 2022

      Before Britain had declared its involvement in World War I, Siegfried Loraine Sassoon had signed up. He would later allude to “serious aspirations to heroism” that took him from his life of a country gentleman in Kent – where he had been born on 8 Se

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Poetry And Protest Of Siegfried Sassoon

      Jun 10, 2022

      Before Britain had declared its involvement in World War I, Siegfried Loraine Sassoon had signed up. He would later allude to “serious aspirations to heroism” that took him from his life of a country gentleman in Kent – where he had been born on 8 Se

      3 min read

    • Article

      What The Thunder Said

      Sep 14, 2022

      ON Margate Sands./I can connect/ Nothing with nothing.’ Thomas Stearns (T. S.) Eliot crafted these short lines that form a part of his fractured epic The Waste Land in October 1921, as he sat in the inauspicious Nayland Rock Shelter (granted Grade II

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Waste Land turns 100

      Oct 19, 2022

      The Waste Land turns 100
      5 min read

    • Article

      Paradise Dimmed

      Jun 29, 2023

      In 1868, the writer John William De Forest coined the term “The Great American Novel” to describe an epic in prose that would “paint the American soul”, capture national ideals and manners, and help unify the United States after the Civil War. He hop

      8 min read

    • Article

      Reynaldo Hahn

      Mar 18, 2021

      Reynaldo Hahn
      6 min read

    • Article

      Armchair Dramatics

      May 6, 2020

      Armchair Dramatics
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Dec 23, 2020

      Books
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for War Poems

    4/5

    3 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A collection of the poems Siegfried Sassoon wrote about World War I. Very thought-provoking in their observations of a war that Sassoon hated and yet felt compelled to support. A very sad commentary on war from the pen of a participant.Wonderful poems, though.
    • 3/5
      I am fascinated with Sassoon's World War I story, and hence I have turned to his poetry. His work, often an indictment of the conduct of the war, followed by the disillusionment of his post war poems make interesting and instructive reading.
    • 4/5
      Loved it - Sassoon is surgical in the precision with which he characterises human feelings and emotions, the futility of the war, its blind cruelty, and how in the end soldiers keep fighting because of the loyalty they feel to their companions also thrown in what is perceived quite clearly as a senseless butchery.

      There are so many verses to quote, so many striking poems that the only thing which makes sense is to read them all - however I found the one below incredibly prescient, and think it should be compulsive reading in all schools


      SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR
      In fifty years, when peace outshines
      Remembrance of the battle lines,
      Adventurous lads will sigh and cast
      Proud looks upon the plundered past.

      On summer morn or winter’s night,
      Their hearts will kindle for the fight,
      Reading a snatch of soldier-song,
      Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong;

      And through the angry marching rhymes
      Of blind regret and haggard mirth,
      They’ll envy us the dazzling times
      When sacrifice absolved our earth.

    Book preview

    War Poems - Siegfried Sassoon

    WAR POEMS

    Siegfried Sassoon

    DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

    MINEOLA, NEW YORK

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

    EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: STEPHANIE CASTILLO SAMOY

    Copyright

    Copyright © 2018 by Dover Publications, Inc.

    All rights reserved.

    Bibliographical Note

    This Dover edition is a new collection of poems selected from the following books: The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, published in 1917 by William Heinemann, London; Counter-Attack and Other Poems, published in 1918 by E. P. Dutton & Company, New York; The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, published in 1919 by William Heinemann, London; and Picture-Show, published in 1920 by E. P. Dutton & Company, New York. The Introduction by Robert Nichols first appeared in Counter-Attack and Other Poems.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Names: Sassoon, Siegfried, 1886–1967, author.

    Title: War poems / Siegfried Sassoon.

    Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, 2018. | Series: Dover thrift editions

    Identifiers: LCCN 2018011979| ISBN 9780486826820 (paperback) | ISBN 0486826821 (paperback)

    Subjects: LCSH: War poetry, English. | World War, 1914-1918—Great Britain—Literature and the war. | BISAC: POETRY / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. | HISTORY / Military / World War I. | LITERARY COLLECTIONS / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.

    Classification: LCC PR6037.A86 A6 2018 | DDC 821/.912—dc23

    LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018011979

    Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

    82682101 2018

    www.doverpublications.com

    Epigraph from

    Counter-Attack and Other Poems

    Dans la trêve désolée de cette matinée, ces hommes qui avaient été tenaillés par la fatigue, fouettés par la pluie, bouleversés par toute une nuit de tonnerre, ces rescapés des volcans et de l’inondation entrevoyaient à quel point la guerre, aussi hideuse au moral qu’au physique, non seulement viole le bon sens, avilit les grandes idées, commande tous les crimes—mais ils se rappelaient combien elle avait développé en eux et autour d’eux tous les mauvais instincts sans en excepter un seul; la méchanceté jusqu’au sadisme, l’égoïsme jusqu’à la férocité, le besoin de jouir jusqu’à la folie.

    Henri Barbusse

    (Le Feu.)

    English language translation of Epigraph from Counter-Attack and Other Poems

    In the desolate truce of this morning, these men who had been tormented by fatigue, whipped by the rain, upset by a night of thunder, these survivors of volcanoes and floods glimpsed how much the war, as hideous to the moral as to the physical, not only violates common sense, degrades big ideas, commands all crimes—but they remembered how much it had developed in them and around them all bad instincts without excepting one; wickedness until sadism, selfishness up to ferocity, the need to come to madness.

    Henri Barbusse

    Le Feu. (Fire)

    CONTENTS

    Introduction

    FROM The Old Huntsman and Other Poems (1917)

    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

    FROM Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

    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

    FROM The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon (1919)

    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

    FROM Picture-Show (1920)

    Memory

    Devotion to Duty

    Titles Index

    First Lines Index

    INTRODUCTION

    by Robert Nichols¹

    New York City, November 20-23, 1917

    Sassoon the Man

    In appearance he is tall, big-boned, loosely built. He is clean-shaven, pale or with a flush; has a heavy jaw, wide mouth with the upper lip slightly protruding and the curve of it very pronounced like that of a shrivelled leaf (as I have noticed is common in many poets). His nose is aquiline, the nostrils being wide and heavily arched. This characteristic and the fullness, depth and heat of his dark eyes give him the air of a sullen falcon. He speaks slowly, enunciating the words as if they pained him, in a voice that has something of the troubled thickness apparent in the voices of those who emerge from a deep grief. As he speaks, his large hands, roughened by trench toil and by riding, wander aimlessly until some emotion grips him when the knuckles harden and he clutches at his knees or at the edge of the table. And

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1