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Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration

In July of 1917, mid-World War I, following a period of convalescent leave during which he had decided to make a stand by not returning to duty, celebrated poet Siegfried Sassoon sent the following open letter to his commanding officer and refused to return to the trenches.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise

A Lament

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings—
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

The Dreamer

He lay within a neat white-sheeted bed,
And stared at distance with his wide young eyes:-
Eyes that held space, had dreams, and saw the spread
Of the huge seas, and saw the stretch of skies;
Watched streets and roofs„ and clouds, and quiet rains:-
Eyes that knew the way each slow wind flies
Through long green lengths of winding country lanes:-
Eyes that held time, and saw all unafraid
Each passing hour
Fall like a sleeping flowers
Against a narrow blade.

Leon Gellert

(Written from a hospital bed in 1915)

Spring

In spring I go to war
To sing or to die. 
What do I care for my own troubles? 
Today I shatter them, laughing in pieces. 

Oh, Brothers, know that young spring came
In a whirlwind. 
Quickly throw off tired grief 
And follow her in a host. 

I have never felt so strongly 
How much I love you, Oh, Germany, 
As the magic of spring surrounds you 
Amidst the bustle of war.

Ernst Toller