Siegfried Sassoon
Dim, gradual thinning of
the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling
daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who
stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken
faces to the sky
They, who have beaten
down
The stale despair of night,
must now renew
Their desolation in the
truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours
that grope for peace.
Yet these, who cling to life
with stubborn hands,
death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles
of his defence.
They march from safety,
and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to
the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing
blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them
where they endure
reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines
volleying doom for doom.
O my brave brown
companions, when your
souls
Flock silently away, and the
eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of
battle on the ridge,
that field of war
Since your unvanquished
hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned
Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions,
scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that
was youth;
The legions who have
suffered and are dust.
—1918