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.

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.