Soldier poets of the Great War (V): Hodgson's nobility vs. Sassoon's realism

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - 11:23 AM Share

William Noel Hodgson prayed ambivalently in his poem "Before Action":

By all delights that I shall miss,

Help me to die, O Lord.

At about the same time, Siegfried Sassoon's thoughts were running colder as he marched past a corps commander:

‘Eyes right!' The corpse-commander was a Mute;

And Death leered round him, taking our salute.

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Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008.

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