74 Quotes by Siegfried Sassoon

The song was wordless; The singing will never be done.

Who's this—alone with stone and sky? It's only my old dog and I— It's only him; it's only me; Alone with stone and grass and tree. What share we most—we two together? Smells, and awareness of the weather. What is it makes us more than dust? My trust in him; in me his trust.

Across the land a faint blue veil of mist Seems hung; the woods wear yet arrayment sober Till frost shall make them flame; silent and whist The drooping cherry orchards of October Like mournful pennons hang their shriveling leaves Russet and orange: all things now decay; Long since ye garnered in your autumn sheaves, And sad the robins pipe at set of day.

In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of May, And touched the nodding peony flowers to bid them waken.

Life for the majority of the population. Is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds. Culminating in a cheap funeral.

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.

December stillness, teach me through your trees That loom along the west, one with the land, The veiled evangel of your mysteries. While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down Deepens, and dusk embues me where I stand, With grave diminishings of green and brown, Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words; And let me learn your secret from the sky, Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds In lone remote migration beating by. December stillness, crossed by twilight roads, Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.

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