On Passing The New Menin Gate

Siegfried Sassoon 1886 (Matfield) – 1967 (Heytesbury)



Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
the unheroic dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,-
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for ever', the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
as these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

31 sec read
790

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEFGG
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 603
Words 104
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 6

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was an eminent 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 later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston trilogy". more…

All Siegfried Sassoon poems | Siegfried Sassoon Books

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