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Quotes from The Counter-Attack and Other Poems — Siegfried Sassoon

1886–1967 England

← All quotes by Siegfried Sassoon

8 quotes

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

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 Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

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

The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.

The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

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.

The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans...
Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

I'd say — "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die — in bed.

The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Siegfried Sassoon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.