Siegfried Sassoon was an English, World War I poet and soldier born in September 1886. His poetry focused on the horrors of war, the lives of the soldiers, and even included satire on those that the poet blamed for beginning the conflict. He died at the age of 80 in September 1967. Read more about Siegfried Sassoon here.
‘Suicide in the Trenches’ is an incredibly tragic poem. Siegfried Sassoon explores the mental deterioration of a young soldier in the trenches of WW1 and his suicide.
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In ‘A Subaltern’ the speaker catches a glimpse of the innocence and hope he thought the war had erased in a conversation with a junior military officer.
Attack’ by Siegfried Sassoon is an eye-opening poem about the harsh reality of war and what it feels like to be a soldier.
‘Counter-Attack’ is perhaps Siegfried Sassoon’s longest poem that describes a failed counter-attack on the German line. From the very first stanza, a sense of hopelessness lurks in this poem.
‘Dreamers’ by Siegfried Sassoon speakers on the inner, dream-like lives of soldiers fighting in the trenches of World War I.
‘Everyone Sang’ by Siegfried Sassoon is a moving poem about the joy experienced at the end of World War I. Knowing that the horrors of the war are over, the world sang out with the joy of a newly uncaged bird.
In ‘Glory of Women,’ Siegfried Sassoon attacks the role of women in wartime and makes them complicit in the deaths of the men they claim to “worship”.
Read Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘The Rear-Guard’ with a complete summary, analysis, and context to the war poem, about a soldier’s journey.