Died Of Wounds Poem by Siegfried Sassoon

Died Of Wounds

Rating: 3.0


His wet white face and miserable eyes
Brought nurses to him more than groans and sighs:
But hoarse and low and rapid rose and fell
His troubled voice: he did the business well.

The ward grew dark; but he was still complaining
And calling out for ‘Dickie’. ‘Curse the Wood!
‘It’s time to go. O Christ, and what’s the good?
‘We’ll never take it, and it’s always raining.’

I wondered where he’d been; then heard him shout,
‘They snipe like hell! O Dickie, don’t go out...
I fell asleep ... Next morning he was dead;
And some Slight Wound lay smiling on the bed.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Jerry Hughes 20 July 2006

What could be said after reading this staggeringly beautiful poem?

4 2 Reply
David Hagreen 25 March 2006

Hi, yeah I think you are right, doing the two of them for my English coursework, I think they had a lot of feeling in what they were writing.This poem seems to be a huge irony on the letters that were sent home to parents saying 'we regret to inform you that your son has died of wounds sustained...'. It read in my book of peotry that Sassoon wrote this about a man who had come from the High Wood, could this possibly be some kind of reference to when he took the trench there single handedly from the Germans about the sniper as he also killed one of them? Any replies would be thankfully recieved.

2 2 Reply
Sarah Munafo 06 January 2006

Have a look at Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est', if you really want to know what it was all about. I feel Owen and Sassoon were probably the two best poets of WWI. Anybody else at all interested in a discussion?

2 4 Reply
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