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Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon

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Dreamers is one of Sassoon’s less well-known war poems. It was written in 1917, after he had made his declaration against the war and been sent to Craiglockhart hospital. It strongly evokes the contrast between the soldiers’ present day in the trenches, in which they seem to be already dead, and their imaginings of the past. It seems impossible for them to ever return to their former lives.

I wonder whether it might have been an influence on Philip Larkin’s MCMXIV (1914), published in 1964. The imagery of pre-war innocence is rather similar.

And although that imagery may be different now, there are volunteer soldiers out there, perhaps thinking rather similar thoughts as I write this.

Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
   Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
   Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
   Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
   They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
   And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
   And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
   And going to the office in the train.

Days of Wine and Roses by Ernest Dowson

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I have given this poem the title by which it is generally known, because Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)himself did not give it an English title. As an Oxford man of that era, he preferred a Latin one, Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam, from the poet Horace. It translates roughly as“the shortness of life forbids us long hopes”.

It was used very memorably in the TV series The Durrells, where it was recited by Keeley Hawes as Louisa Durrell. She was trying to make her squabbling children understand that their life on Corfu was an idyllic sojourn that would not last forever.

Sadly but somewhat appropriately for the author of a poem about the brevity of life, Dowson, who was associated with the decadent movement, died of alcoholism at the age of thirty–two.

Days of Wine and Roses by Ernest Dowson

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
   Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
   We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
    Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
   Within a dream.

The Coombe by Edward Thomas

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I don’t know what brought this one to mind again; perhaps walking in the woods, as I have done so often recently, listening to the birds singing. It’s one of Edward Thomas’ earliest poems, from 1914, I believe.

 

The Coombe

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark.
Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar;
And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk
By beech and yew and perishing juniper
Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots
And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter,
The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds
Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper,
Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark
The Combe looks since they killed the badger there,
Dug him out and gave him to the hounds,
That most ancient Briton of English beasts.