42 Siegfried Sassoon Quotes

Siegfried Sassoon quotes

1. 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.

2. 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.

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

4. 'Dreamers' (Full text online at Wikisource)

5. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

6. 'Dreamers'

7. If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line of death.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride 'Their name liveth for evermore' the Gateway claims. Was ever an immolation so belied As these intolerably nameless names? Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

12. What voice revisits me this night? What face To my heart's room returns? From the perpetual silence where the grace Of human sainthood burns Hastes he once more to harmonise and heal? I know not. Only I feel His influence undiminished And his life's work, in me and many, unfinished.

13. 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.

14. Deep in my morning time he made his mark And still he comes uncalled to be my guide In devastated regions When the brain has lost its bearings in the dark And broken in it's body's pride In the long campaign to which it had sworn allegiance.

1. I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

2. Who's this—alone with stone and sky? It's only my old dog and I— It's only him; it's only me; Alone with stone and grass and tree. What share we most—we two together? Smells, and awareness of the weather. What is it makes us more than dust? My trust in him; in me his trust.

3. And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of May, And touched the nodding peony flowers to bid them waken.

4. The visionless officialized fatuityThat once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity.

5. December stillness, teach me through your trees That loom along the west, one with the land, The veiled evangel of your mysteries. While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down Deepens, and dusk embues me where I stand, With grave diminishings of green and brown, Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words; And let me learn your secret from the sky, Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds In lone remote migration beating by. December stillness, crossed by twilight roads, Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Mud and rain and wretchedness and blood. Why should jolly soldier-boys complain? God made these before the roofless Flood - Mud and rain.

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

10. 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.

11. I didn't want to die - not before I'd finished reading The Return of the Native anyhow.

12. In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

13. October's bellowing anger breakes and cleavesThe bronzed battalions of the stricken woodIn whose lament I hear a voice that grievesFor battle's fruitless harvest, and the feudOf outrage men. Their lives are like the leavesScattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blownAlong the westering furnace flaring red.O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

14. How innocent were these Trees, that in Mist-green May, blown by a prospering breeze, Stood garlanded and gay; Who now in sundown glow Of serious colour clad confront me with their show As though resigned and sad, Trees, who unwhispering stand umber, bronze, gold; Pavilioning the land for one grown tired and old; Elm, chestnut, aspen and pine, I am merged in you, Who tell once more in tones of time, Your foliaged farewell.

15. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers.

16. 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.

17. EVERYONE suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight. Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

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

19. In the years 1910 and 1911 I had 51 innings with 10 not outs and an average of 19. This I consider a creditable record for a poet.

20. His wet white face and miserable eyesBrought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fellHis troubled voice: he did the business well.(First verse of Died of Wounds)

21. The dead...are more real than the living because they are complete.

22. The song was wordless; The singing will never be done.

23. The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.

24. 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.

25. For it is humanly certain that most of us remember very little of what we have read. To open almost any book a second time is to be reminded that we had forgotten well-nigh everything that the writer told us. Parting from the narrator and his narrative, we retain only a fading impression; and he, as it were, takes the book away from us and tucks it under his arm.

26. O German mother dreaming by the fire, While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

27. Man, it seemed, had been created to jab the life out of Germans.

28. 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.