Siegfried Sassoon

“ Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way,
With glad or grievous hearts I'll never understand
Because Time spins so fast, and they've no time to stay
Beyond the moment's gesture of a lifted hand.
And still, between the shadow and the blinding flame,
The brave despair of men flings onward, ever the same
As in those doom-lit years that wait them, and have been...
And life is just the picture dancing on a screen. ”

“ I'm but a bird at dawn that cries, 'chink, chink'—
A garden-bird that warbles in the rain.
And you're the flying-man, the speck that steers
A careful course; far down the verge of day,
Half-way across the world. Above the years
You soar ... Is death so bad? ... ”

“ Kneeling beside your bed with bowed and hopeless head?
What mercy can He give you?—Dreams of the unborn
Children that haunt your soul like loving words unsaid—
Dreams, as a song half-heard through sleep in early morn? ”

“ Yes; you can do it, once you get a start:
All that you want is waiting in your head,
For long-ago you've learnt it off by heart.
* * * * * * *
Begin: your mind's the room where you must sleep,
(Don't pause for rhymes) , till twilight wakes you early.
The window stands wide-open, as it stood
When tree-tops loomed enchanted for a child
Hearing the dawn's first thrushes through the wood
Warbling (you know the words) serene and wild. ”

“ And walk straight in, abandoning To-day.
(To-day's a place outside the picture-house;
Forget it, and the film will do the rest.)
There's nothing fine in being as large as life:
The splendour starts when things begin to move
And gestures grow enormous. That's the way
To dramatise your dreams and play the part
As you'd have done if luck had starred your face.
I'm 'Rupert from the Mountains'! (Pass the stout) ...
Yes, I'm the Broncho Boy we watched to-night,
That robbed a ranch and galloped down the creek. ”

“ Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.
One sentry by the davits, in the gloom
Stands mute: the boat heaves onward through the night.
Shrouded is every chink of cabined light:
And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom
And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders ... doom.
Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh;
And slowly growing used to groping dark,
I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length,
Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength—
Blanketed soldiers sleeping. ”

“ O sing us the songs, the songs of our own land,
You warbling ladies in white.
Dimness conceals the hunger in our faces,
This wall of faces risen out of the night,
These eyes that keep their memories of the places
So long beyond their sight.
Jaded and gay, the ladies sing; and the chap in brown
Tilts his grey hat; jaunty and lean and pale,
He rattles the keys.... Some actor-bloke from town... ”

“ Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head....
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.
ST. VENANT. July, 1918.
BATTALION-RELIEF
'Fall in! Now get a move on.' (Curse the rain.) ”

“ Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy.
We found the little kingdom of our passion
That all can share who walk the road of lovers.
In wild and secret happiness we stumbled;
And gods and demons clamoured in our senses. ”

“ Then squeal like stoats when bombs begin to fly.
* * * * * * *
And you? I know your record. You went sick
When orders looked unwholesome: then, with trick
And lie, you wangled home. And here you are,
Still talking big and boozing in a bar.
TO LEONIDE MASSINE
IN 'CLEOPATRA'
O beauty doomed and perfect for an hour,
Leaping along the verge of death and night,
You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight
Four long years past, discovering pride and power.
You die but in our dreams, who watch you fall
Knowing that to-morrow you will dance again. ”

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Two hundred copies printed for the Author by J. B. Peace, M. A., at the University Press, Cambridge, June, 1919. ”