On Re-Reading Sassoon's War Poems
There are worse things than slogging through the mud
Of some French field with anger in your eyes;
Worse things than the quickening blood and the pulse in the forehead
Floundering with the battalion across the pitted earth;
Worse things than whistling death by lead or by shaken steel.
There are things worse than the pounding, implacable guns.
There are worse deaths than death in the blinding rain,
Wounded and burning with fever upon the wire. . .
Those were the bright deaths; of the body only those,
But our souls die in the hungry hope for food:
And the things that we were trudge to unwilling doors,
Asking for work, for alms, for bitter bread.
There will be no swift, down-driven kiss of steel for us;