Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 2

in its way, this early poetry does excel.

It was characteristic of him that nearly every little
book he then wrote
was privately printed. Poetry was
for him just something for private
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