Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 2

and particular?enjoyment--like a ride alone before breakfast. Among?these privately printed books are Twelve Sonnets?(1911), Melodies, An Ode for Music, Hyacinth?(all 1912). The names are significant. He was occupied?with natural beauty and with music. In 1913 he?publishes in a limited and obscure edition Apollo in?Doelyrium, wherein it seems that he is beginning to?find a certain want of body and basis in his poems?made of beautiful words about beautiful objects.?Later in the same year, with Masefield's Everlasting?Mercy (1911), Widow in the Bye Sheet (1912) and?Daffodil Fields (1913) before him, he starts to write a?parody of these uncouth intrusions of the sorrows of?obscure persons into his paradise but half way through?the poem adopts the Masefield manner in earnest
[Footnote: I had this from his own mouth.]
and finishes by unsuccessfully endeavouring to rival his?master. In 1914 the War breaks out. Home on leave?in 1915 he privately prints Discoveries, a little book?which contains some of the loveliest of his 'paradise'?poems. In 1916 the change has come. He can hardly?believe it himself. 'Morning Glory' (privately printed)?includes four war poems. He has not definitely?turned to his later style but he hovers on the brink.?The war is beginning to pain him. The poems 'To?Victory' and 'The Dragon and the Undying' show him?turning toward his paradise to see if its beauty can save?him ... The year 1917 witnesses the publication of?The Old Huntsman.
[Footnote: 'The Old Huntsman,' Dutton & Co., 1918.]
This book secured instantaneous success.?Siegfried Sassoon, on its publication,?became one of the leading young poets of England.?The book begins with the long monologue of a retired?huntsman, a piece of remarkable characterisation.?It continues with all the best of the 'paradise'?poems, including the loveliest in 'Discoveries' and?'Morning Glory.' There are also the 'bridge' poems?between his old manner and his new such as the 'To?Victory' mentioned above. But interspersed among?the paradise poems are the first poems in his final war?style. He tells the story of the change in a characteristic manner--Conscripts (page 51, 'The Old Huntsman').?For like nearly every one of the young English poets,?he is to some extent a humourist. His humour is not,?however, even through 'The Old Huntsman' all?of such a wise and gentle tenor. He breaks out into?lively bitterness in such poems as 'They,'?'The Tombstone Maker' and 'Blighters.'
CONSCRIPTS
"Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more?"Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right!?"The luminous rich colours that you wore?"Have changed to hueless khaki in the night.?"Magic? What's magic got to do with you??"There's no such thing! Blood's red and skies are blue."
They gasped and sweated, marching up and down.?I drilled them till they cursed my raucous shout.?Love chucked his lute away and dropped his crown.?Rhyme got sore heels and wanted to fall out.?"Left, right! Press on your butts!" They looked at me?Reproachful; how I longed to set them free!
I gave them lectures on Defence, Attack;?They fidgeted and shuffled, yawned and sighed,?And boggled at my questions. Joy was slack,?And Wisdom gnawed his fingers, gloomy-eyed.?Young Fancy--how I loved him all the while--?Stared at his note-book with a rueful smile.
Their training done, I shipped them all to France.?Where most of those I'd loved too well got killed.?Rapture and pale Enchantment and Romance,?And many a sickly, slender lord who'd filled?My soul long since with litanies of sin.?Went home, because they couldn't stand the din.
But the kind, common ones that I despised,?(Hardly a man of them I'd count as friend),?What stubborn-hearted virtues they disguised!?They stood and played the hero to the end,?Won gold and silver medals bright with bars,?And marched resplendent home with crowns and stars.
This book (in consequence almost wholly of these?bitter poems) enjoyed a remarkable success with the?soldiers fighting in France. One met it everywhere.?"Hello, you know Siegfried Sassoon then, do you??Well, tell him from me that the more he lays it on thick?to those who don't realize the war the better. That's?the stuff we want. We're fed up with the old men's?death-or-glory stunt." In 1918 appeared 'Countermans'?Attack': here there is hardly a trace of the 'paradise'?feeling. You can't even think of paradise when you're?in hell. For Sassoon was now well along the way of?thorns. How many lives had he not seen spilled apparently?to no purpose? Did not the fact of war arch?him in like a dirty blood-red sky? He breaks out,?almost like a mad man, into imprecations, into?vehement tirades, into sarcasms, ironies, the hellish?laughters that arise from a heart that is not broken?once for all but that is newly broken every day while?the Monster that devours the lives of the young?continues its ravages. Take, for instance, the magnificent?'To Any Dead Officer', written just before America?entered the war. Many reading this poem would think?Great Britain was going to cease fighting. But nothing?of the sort. One must always remember that bitter?as these imprecations are against those who mismanaged?certain episodes in the war, the ultimate foe?is not they but the German Junkers who planned this?war for forty years,