EVERYONE SANG

Siegfried Sassoon 1886-1967

Everyone suddenly burst out singing:

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields: on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun;

My heart was shaken with tears: and horror

Drifted away . . . O, but everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Siegfried Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. He became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in his "Soldier's Declaration" of 1917. from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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