fuckyeahsassoon

I love all things that pass: their briefness is
Music that fades on transient silences.
Winds, birds, and glittering leaves that flare and fall—
They fling delight across the world; they call
To rhythmic-flashing limbs that rove and race…
A moment in the dawn for Youth’s lit face;
A moment’s passion, closing on the cry—
‘O Beauty, born of lovely things that die!’

—Vision by Siegfried Sassoon 

Alone, in silence, at a certain time of night,
Listening, and looking up from what I’m trying to write,
I hear a local train along the Valley. And “There
Goes the one-fifty,” think I to myself; aware
That somehow its habitual travelling comforts me,
Making my world seem safer, homelier, sure to be
The same to-morrow; and the same, one hopes, next year.
“There’s peacetime in that train.” One hears it disappear
With needless warning whistle and rail-resounding wheels.
“That train’s quite like an old familiar friend,” one feels.

—A Local Train of Thought by Siegfried Sassoon (1940)

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath
I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,”
I’d say — “I used to know his father well;
Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.”
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I’d toddle safely home and die — in bed.

—Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon

For the soldier is no longer a noble figure; he is merely a writhing insect among this ghastly folly of destruction.

—Siegfried Sassoon. Diary entry, 22nd February 1917 (via makemerun)

(Source: amongablazeoflights)