At Carnoy (by Siegfried Sassoon)

At Carnoy
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

Down in the hollow there’s 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.
Crouched among thistle-tufts I’ve watched the glow
Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade;
And I’m content. To-morrow we must go
To take some cursèd Wood … O world God made!

   July 3rd, 1916

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‘Blighters’ (by Siegfried Sassoon)

‘Blighters’
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin    
And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks    
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;    
‘We’re sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!’    
 
I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home, sweet Home,’    
And there’d be no more jokes in Music-halls    
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

*

A Whispered Tale (by Siegfried Sassoon)

A Whispered Tale
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

 I’d heard fool-heroes brag of where they’d been,
With stories of the glories that they’d seen.
But you, good simple soldier, seasoned well
In woods and posts and crater-lines of hell,
Who dodge remembered ‘crumps’ with wry grimace,
Endured experience in your queer, kind face,
Fatigues and vigils haunting nerve-strained eyes,
And both your brothers killed to make you wise;
You had no babbling phrases; what you said
Was like a message from the maimed and dead.
But memory brought the voice I knew, whose note
Was muted when they shot you in the throat;
And still you whisper of the war, and find
Sour jokes for all those horrors left behind.

*

A Working Party (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

A Working Party
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

Three hours ago he blundered up the trench,
Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;
Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls
With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.
He couldn’t see the man who walked in front;
Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet
Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing
Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.

Voices would grunt ‘Keep to your right — make way!’
When squeezing past some men from the front-line:
White faces peered, puffing a point of red;
Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks
And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom
Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore
Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.

A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread
And flickered upward, showing nimble rats
And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain;
Then the slow silver moment died in dark.

The wind came posting by with chilly gusts
And buffeting at the corners, piping thin.
And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots
Would split and crack and sing along the night,
And shells came calmly through the drizzling air
To burst with hollow bang below the hill.



Three hours ago, he stumbled up the trench;
Now he will never walk that road again:
He must be carried back, a jolting lump
Beyond all needs of tenderness and care.



He was a young man with a meagre wife
And two small children in a Midland town,
He showed their photographs to all his mates,
And they considered him a decent chap
Who did his work and hadn’t much to say,
And always laughed at other people’s jokes
Because he hadn’t any of his own.



That night when he was busy at his job
Of piling bags along the parapet,
He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet
And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold.
He thought of getting back by half-past twelve,
And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep
In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes
Of coke, and full of snoring weary men.



He pushed another bag along the top,
Craning his body outward; then a flare
Gave one white glimpse of
No Man’s Land and wire;
And as he dropped his head the instant split
His startled life with lead, and all went out.

*

In the Pink (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

In the Pink
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

So Davies wrote: ‘This leaves me in the pink’.
Then scrawled his name: ‘Your loving sweetheart, Willie’.
With crosses for a hug. He’d had a drink
Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.
Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.

But he couldn’t sleep that night; stiff in the dark
He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
And how he’d go as cheerful as a lark
In his best suit, to wander arm in arm
With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
The simple, silly things she liked to hear.

And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
To-night he’s in the pink; but soon he’ll die.
And still the war goes on — he don’t know why. 
  

*

A Subaltern (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

A Subaltern
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

He turned to me with his kind, sleepy gaze
And fresh face slowly brightening to the grin
That sets my memory back to summer days,
With twenty runs to make, and last man in.
He told me he’d been having a bloody time 
In trenches, crouching for the crumps to burst,
While squeaking rats scampered across the slime
And the grey palsied weather did its worst.
But as he stamped and shivered in the rain,
My stale philosophies had served him well;
Dreaming about his girl had sent his brain
Blanker than ever—she’d no place in Hell….
‘Good God!’ he laughed, and slowly filled his pipe,
Wondering ‘why he always talked such tripe’.  

*

The Redeemer (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

The Redeemer
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;   

It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,

When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep;   

There, with much work to do before the light,   

We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might   

Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang,   

And droning shells burst with a hollow bang;   

We were soaked, chilled and wretched, every one;   

Darkness; the distant wink of a huge gun.

I turned in the black ditch, loathing the storm;   

A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare,   

And lit the face of what had been a form   

Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there;   

I say that He was Christ; stiff in the glare,   

And leaning forward from His burdening task,   

Both arms supporting it; His eyes on mine   

Stared from the woeful head that seemed a mask   

Of mortal pain in Hell’s unholy shine.

No thorny crown, only a woollen cap

He wore—an English soldier, white and strong,   

Who loved his time like any simple chap,   

Good days of work and sport and homely song;   

Now he has learned that nights are very long,   

And dawn a watching of the windowed sky.   

But to the end, unjudging, he’ll endure   

Horror and pain, not uncontent to die   

That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure.

He faced me, reeling in his weariness,

Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear.   

I say that He was Christ, who wrought to bless   

All groping things with freedom bright as air,   

And with His mercy washed and made them fair.   

Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch,   

While we began to struggle along the ditch;   

And someone flung his burden in the muck,   

Mumbling: ‘O Christ Almighty, now I’m stuck!’

 

*

The Kiss (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

The Kiss
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

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.

He spins and burns and loves the air,
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.

Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:
That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.

*

A Mystic as Soldier (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

A Mystic as Soldier
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

I lived my days apart,
Dreaming fair songs for God;
By the glory in my heart
Covered and crowned and shod.

Now God is in the strife,
And I must seek Him there,
Where death outnumbers life,
And fury smites the air.

I walk the secret way
With anger in my brain.
O music through my clay,
When will you sound again? 

*

View Siegfried Sassoon’s manuscript of this poem here.

Golgotha (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

Golgotha
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

Through darkness curves a spume of falling flares
That flood the field with shallow, blanching light. 
  The huddled sentry stares
  On gloom at war with white,
  And white receding slow, submerged in gloom.
  Guns into mimic thunder burst and boom,
  And mirthless laughter rakes the whistling night.
The sentry keeps his watch where no one stirs
But the brown rats, the nimble scavengers.

*