Siegfried Sassoon Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

And when the war is done and youth stone dead, I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.

In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

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.

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

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.

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

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

The visionless officialized fatuityThat once kept Europe safe for Perpetuity.

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

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

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.

And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I did not dread the dark winter as people do when they have lost their youth and live alone in some great city.

Phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.

I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.

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." "The War Poems

Mute in that golden silence hung with green, Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyesRemembrance of all beauty that has been, And stillness from the pools of Paradise.