Sassoon the Poet

The poetry of Siegfried Sassoon divides itself into
two rough classes--the idyllic and the satiric. War
has defiled one to produce the other. At heart
Siegfried Sassoon is an idealist.

Before the war he had hardly published a line. He
spent his summers in the company of books, at the
piano, on expeditions, and in playing tennis. During
winter he hunted. Hunting was a greater passion with
him than poetry. Much of his poetry celebrated the
loveliness of the field as seen by the huntsman in the
early morning light. But few probably guessed that
the youth known to excel in field sports excelled also
in poetry. For, in its way, this early poetry does excel.
It was characteristic of him that nearly every little
book he then wrote was privately printed. Poetry was
for him just something for private and particular
enjoyment--like a ride alone before breakfast. Among
these privately printed books are Twelve Sonnets
(1911), Melodies, An Ode for Music, Hyacinth
(all 1912). The names are significant. He was occupied
with natural beauty and with music. In 1913 he
publishes in a limited and obscure edition Apollo in
Doelyrium, wherein it seems that he is beginning to
find a certain want of body and basis in his poems
made of beautiful words about beautiful objects.
Later in the same year, with Masefield's Everlasting