Siegfried Sassoon Quotes

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Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Siegfried Sassoon
I believe that the war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.... I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

Siegfried Sassoon
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that 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 soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.

Siegfried Sassoon
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

Siegfried Sassoon
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.
I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the contrivance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.

Siegfried Sassoon
Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans...
Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

Siegfried Sassoon
'Good-morning; good morning!' the General said
When we met him 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.

Siegfried Sassoon
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,— loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

Siegfried Sassoon
Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, —
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Siegfried Sassoon
Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy. We found the little kingdom of our passion that all can share who walk the road of lovers. In wild and secret happiness we stumbled; and gods and demons clamoured in our senses.

Siegfried Sassoon
Does it matter?—losing your sight?…
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Siegfried Sassoon
Let no one ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages.

Siegfried Sassoon
The visionless officialized fatuity
That once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity.

Siegfried Sassoon
Life for the majority of the population.
Is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds.
Culminating in a cheap funeral.

Siegfried Sassoon
Across the land a faint blue veil of mist
Seems hung; the woods wear yet arrayment sober
Till frost shall make them flame; silent and whist
The drooping cherry orchards of October
Like mournful pennons hang their shriveling leaves
Russet and orange: all things now decay;
Long since ye garnered in your autumn sheaves,
And sad the robins pipe at set of day.

Siegfried Sassoon
Let my soul, a shining tree, Silver branches lift towards thee, Where on a hallowed winter's night The clear-eyed angels may alight.

Siegfried Sassoon
I'd say — "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead
I'd toddle safely home and die — in bed.

Siegfried Sassoon
And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.

Siegfried Sassoon
O fathering friend and scientist of good,
Who in solitude, one bygone summer's day,
And in the throes of bodily anguish, passed away
From dream and conflict and research-lit lands
Of ethnological learning, — even as you stood
Selfless and ardent, resolute and gay,
So in this hour, in strange survival stands
Your ghost, whom I am powerless to repay.

Siegfried Sassoon
But I've grown thoughtful now. And you have lost Your early-morning freshness of surprise At being so utterly mine: you've learned to fear The gloomy, stricken places in my soul, And the occasional ghosts that haunt my gaze.

Siegfried Sassoon