Siegfried Sassoon Quotes

A man may be born a poet, but he has to make himself an artist as well.

The skull that housed white angels and had vision Of daybreak through the gateways of the mind.

Here Vaughan lies dead, whose name flows on for ever Through pastures of the spirit washed with dew And starlit with eternities unknown.

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?

They have spoken lightly of my deathless friends, (Lamps for my gloom, hands guiding where I stumble,) Quoting, for shallow conversational ends, What Shelley shrilled, what Blake once wildly muttered… How can they use such names and be not humble?

Alone… The word is life endured and known. It is the stillness where our spirits walk And all but inmost faith is overthrown.

And what is time but shadows that were cast By these storm-sculptured stones while centuries fled? The stones remain; their stillness can outlast The skies of history hurrying overhead.

When all is said and done, leading a good life is more important than keeping a good diary.

But the past is just the same, and War’s a bloody game.

Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom.

You are too young to fall asleep for ever; And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled, And one arm bent across your sullen cold Exhausted face?

You have no part with lads who fought And laughed and suffered at my side. Your fugues and symphonies have brought No memory of my friends who died.

From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, The substance of my dreams took fire. You built cathedrals in my heart, And lit my pinnacled desire.

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.

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

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 to death.

We’d gained our first objective hours before While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.

How right it seemed that he should reach the span Of comfortable years allowed to man! Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife, Safe with his wound, a citizen of life. He hobbled blithely through the garden gate, And thought : ‘Thank God they had to amputate!’

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.