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Thursday, April 20, 2006

Poetry Thursday

This is a wonderful little poem made more remarkable by the time when it was written. Its author Siegfried Sassoon was known as one of the poets of the First World War. Many of his poems are filled with horror but this one written in April 1919 is quite the opposite.

Every One Sang

Every one suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom
Wingly wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields; on; on;
and out of sight.

Every one's voice was suddenly lifted,
And beauty came like the setting sun.
My heart was shaken with tears, and horror
Drifted away.....O, but every one
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the
singing will never be done.

-Siegfried Sassoon (1886 - 1967)

2 comments:

bee said...

"and the song was wordless; and the singing will never be done."
i mean, come on. somebody wrote that?
i love how the best lines in poems like that are the simplest, yet most evocative.
simply beautiful. thank you for sharing.
-your poems sharer

gkgirl said...

the feeling this evoked
was tangible...
palpable...
i could feel myself
breathing deeper as i read it...

:)