The General and other poems: First world war poetry by Siegfried Sassoon (War Poems Book 1)

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This new edition of poems draws from poems published during and shortly after the First World War by Siegfried Sassoon and offers a unique insight into his evolution as a poet with an introduction on his wartime experiences which prompted him to write his famous Soldier's Declaration and tracing the progress of his poetry from naive patriotism on the eve of war to something darker.

As well as his most well known war poems, several early poems are included illustrating his early naïve ignorance of the terrible reality of war, prior to the death of his brother in 1915 and his experiences at the front, and then the full text of Sassoon's A Soldier's Declaration, which marks his break with the military authorities. Such was the uproar caused by his statement, which was read aloud in parliament and published in The Times in 1917, that he was afterwards diagnosed with shell shock and incarcerated in a hospital at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh, where he continued to write and where he was to meet, and greatly influence, the young Wilfred Owen.

Poems included in this edition are:

Absolution
A Letter Home
The Hero
The Poet as Hero
The General
Attack
Counter-Attack
The Rear-Guard
Wirers
The Humbled Heart
Prelude: The Troops
Dreamers
How to die
The Effect
A Soldier's Declaration
The Fathers
Lamentations
Suicide in the trenches
Does it matter?
Fight to a finish
Editorial Impression
Glory of women
Their frailty
The Hawthorn Tree
The Investiture
Trench Duty
Break of day
To any dead officer
Sick leave
Banishment
Song-books of the war
Thrushes
Autumn
Invocation
Repression of war experience
The Triumph
Joy Bells
Remorse
Dead Musicians
The Dream
In Barracks
Conscripts
Together
Survivors
Everyone Sang