All Poems

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Villon

© Siegfried Sassoon

They threw me from the gates: my matted hair
Was dank with dungeon wetness; my spent frame
Oerlaid with marish agues: everywhere
Tortured by leaping pangs of frost and flame,

Invocation

© Siegfried Sassoon

Come down from heaven to meet me when my breath
Chokes, and through drumming shafts of stifling death
I stumble toward escape, to find the door
Opening on morn where I may breathe once more

When Im among a Blaze of Lights

When Im among a blaze of lights,
With tawdry music and cigars
And women dawdling through delights,
And officers in cocktail bars,
Sometimes I think of garden nights
And elm trees nodding at the stars.

Two Hundred Years After

© Siegfried Sassoon

But when he'd told his tale, an old man said
That he'd seen soldiers pass along that hill;
'Poor silent things, they were the English dead
Who came to fight in France and got their fill.'

The Choral Union

© Siegfried Sassoon

He staggered in from night and frost and fog
And lampless streets: hed guzzled like a hog
And drunk till he was dazed. And now he came
To hearhe couldnt call to mind the name
But hed been given a ticket for the show,
And thought hed (hiccup) chance his luck and go.

Wraiths

© Siegfried Sassoon

They know not the green leaves;
In whose earth-haunting dream
Dimly the forest heaves,
And voiceless goes the stream.

Prelude to an Unwritten Masterpiece

© Siegfried Sassoon

You like my bird-sung gardens: wings and flowers;
Calm landscapes for emotion; star-lit lawns;
And Youth against the sun-rise ... Not profound;
But such a haunting music in the sound:
Do it once more; it helps us to forget.

Arcady Unheeding

© Siegfried Sassoon

Shepherds go whistling on their way
In the spring season of the year;
One watches weather-signs of day;
One of his maid most dear

Goblin Revel

© Siegfried Sassoon

They pause, and hushed to whispers, steal away.
With cunning glances; silent go their shoon
On creakless stairs; but far away the dogs
Bark at some lonely farm: and haply they
Have clambered back into the dusky moon
That sinks beyond the marshes loud with frogs.

To Leonide Massine in Cleopatra

© Siegfried Sassoon

O beauty doomed and perfect for an hour,
Leaping along the verge of death and night,
You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight
Four long years past, discovering pride and power.

Before Day

© Siegfried Sassoon

When the first lark goes up to look for day
And morning glimmers out of dreams, come then
Out of the songless valleys, over grey
Wide misty lands to bring me on my way:
For I am lone, a dweller among men
Hungered for what my heart shall never say.

The Road

© Siegfried Sassoon

The road is thronged with women; soldiers pass
And halt, but never see them; yet theyre here
A patient crowd along the sodden grass,
Silent, worn out with waiting, sick with fear.

Editorial Impressions

© Siegfried Sassoon

He seemed so certain all was going well,
As he discussed the glorious time hed had
While visiting the trenches.
One can tell

Nimrod in September

© Siegfried Sassoon

When half the drowsy worlds a-bed
And misty morning rises red,
With jollity of horn and lusty cheer,
Young Nimrod urges on his dwindling rout;

To a Very Wise Man

IFires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames
In the huge midnight forest of the unknown.
Your soul is full of cities with dead names,
And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone

At Carnoy

Down in the hollow theres the whole Brigade
Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow
I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played,
And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low.

Stretcher Case

He woke; the clank and racket of the train
Kept time with angry throbbings in his brain.
Then for a while he lapsed and drowsed again.

Morning-Land

Old English songs, you bring to me
A simple sweetness somewhat kin
To birds that through the mystery
Of earliest morn make tuneful din,

In Barracks

The barrack-square, washed clean with rain,
Shines wet and wintry-grey and cold.
Young Fusiliers, strong-legged and bold,
March and wheel and march again.

Battalion-Relief

FALL in! Now get a move on. (Curse the rain.)
We splash away along the straggling village,
Out to the flat rich country, green with June...
And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,