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TITLE: COUNTER-ATTACK AND OTHER POEMS
AUTHOR: SIEGFRIED SASSOON
EBOOK: E00756 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

COUNTER-ATTACK
AND OTHER POEMS

BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON

With An Introduction By
Robert Nichols

TO ROBERT ROSS

Dans la treve desolee de cette matinee, ces hommes
qui avaient ete tenailles par la fatigue, fouettes par
la pluie, bouleverses par toute une nuit de tonnerre,
ces rescapes des volcans et de l'inondation entrevoyaient
a quel point la guerre, aussi hideuse au moral
qu'au physique, non seulement viole le bon sens, avilit
les grandes idees, commande tous les crimes--mais ils
se rappelaient combien elle avait developpe en eux et
autour d'eux tous les mauvais instincts sans en excepter
un seul; la mechancete jusqu'au sadisme,
l'egoisme jusqu'a la ferocite, le besoin de jouir jusqu'a
la folie.    HENRI BARBUSSE. (Le Feu.)

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT NICHOLS
PRELUDE: THE TROOPS
COUNTER-ATTACK
THE REAR-GUARD
WIRERS
ATTACK
DREAMERS
HOW TO DIE
THE EFFECT
TWELVE MONTHS AFTER
THE FATHERS
BASE DETAILS
THE GENERAL
LAMENTATIONS
DOES IT MATTER?
FIGHT TO A FINISH
EDITORIAL IMPRESSIONS
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
GLORY OF WOMEN
THEIR FRAILTY
THE HAWTHORN TREE
THE INVESTITURE
TRENCH DUTY
BREAK OF DAY
TO ANY DEAD OFFICER
SICK LEAVE
BANISHMENT
SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR
THRUSHES
AUTUMN
INVOCATION
REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE
THE TRIUMPH
SURVIVORS
JOY-BELLS
REMORSE
DEAD MUSICIANS
THE DREAM
IN BARRACKS
TOGETHER

INTRODUCTION

Sassoon the Man

In appearance he is tall, big-boned, loosely built. He
is clean-shaven, pale or with a flush; has a heavy jaw,
wide mouth with the upper lip slightly protruding and
the curve of it very pronounced like that of a shrivelled
leaf (as I have noticed is common in many poets).
His nose is aquiline, the nostrils being wide and heavily
arched. This characteristic and the fullness, depth and
heat of his dark eyes give him the air of a sullen
falcon. He speaks slowly, enunciating the words as if
they pained him, in a voice that has something of the
troubled thickness apparent in the voices of those who
emerge from a deep grief. As he speaks, his large
hands, roughened by trench toil and by riding, wander
aimlessly until some emotion grips him when the
knuckles harden and he clutches at his knees or at the
edge of the table. And all the while he will be breathing
hard like a man who has swum a distance. When
he reads his poems he chants and one would think
that he communed with himself save that, at the
pauses, he shoots a powerful glance at the listener.
Between the poems he is still but moves his lips...
He likes best to speak of hunting (he will shout of it!),
of open air mornings when the gorse alone flames
brighter than the sky, of country quiet, of his mother,

[Footnote: His father was a well-to-do country gentleman of
Anglo-Jewish stock, his mother an English woman, a Miss
Thornycroft, sister of the sculptor of that name.]

of poetry--usually Shelley, Masefield and Thomas
Hardy--and last and chiefly--but always with a rapid,
tumbling enunciation and a much-irked desperate air
filled with pain--of soldiers. For the incubus of war
is on him so that his days are shot with anguish and
his nights with horror.

He is twenty-eight years old; was educated at
Marlborough and Christchurch, Oxford; was a master of
fox-hounds and is a captain in the Royal Welsh
Fusiliers. Thrice he has fought in France and once in
Palestine. Behind his name are set the letters M.C.
since he has won the Military Cross for an act of
valour which went near to securing him a higher
honour.

Sassoon the Poet

The poetry of Siegfried Sassoon divides itself into
two rough classes--the idyllic and the satiric. War
has defiled one to produce the other. At heart
Siegfried Sassoon is an idealist.

Before the war he had hardly published a line. He
spent his summers in the company of books, at the
piano, on expeditions, and in playing tennis. During
winter he hunted. Hunting was a greater passion with
him than poetry. Much of his poetry celebrated the
loveliness of the field as seen by the huntsman in the
early morning light. But few probably guessed that
the youth known to excel in field sports excelled also
in poetry. For, 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."


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