searched for entries under tripe in soup tales and found these lines by Sassoon:
But as he stamped and shivered in the rain, My stale philosophies had served him well; Dreaming about his girl had sent his brain Blanker than ever--she'd no place in Hell.... 'Good God!' he laughed, and slowly filled his pipe, Wondering 'why he always talked such tripe'.
Siegfried Sassoon in A Subaltern
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon.(1886-1967) was a poet who was deeply affected by his experiences in the Great War. In 1917 Sassoon wrote a statement against the continuation of the War which resulted in him being hospitalised for shell shock.
This Oxford University Site on WWI Poetry has some poems by Sassoon including this one;
Survivors
No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're 'longing to go out again,' —
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,—
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
Craiglockhart. October, 1917.
Collected Poems 1908-1956, Siegfried Sassoon (Faber and Faber, 1984)
1 comment:
His book, The Memoire's of George Sherston, is a jewel of a read.His time away from the war,spent in humor and keen observation, is written in a narrative style;while his deployments at the front,all four, were written in diary form.You find yourself reading the book at two speeds. The first, slowly, like a slow boat on a slower river;while the parts at the Front are heart-pounding;with a real feeling for the danger involved in being on the line back then .
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