Morning Express

Morning Express

Along the wind-swept platform, pinched and white,

The travellers stand in pools of wintry light,

Offering themselves to morn’s long slanting arrows.

The train’s due; porters trundle laden barrows.

The train steams in, volleying resplendent clouds

Of sun-blown vapour. Hither and about,

Scared people hurry, storming the doors in crowds.

The officials seem to waken with a shout,

Resolved to hoist and plunder; some to the vans

Leap; others rumble the milk in gleaming cans.

Boys, indolent-eyed, from baskets leaning back,

Question each face; a man with a hammer steals

Stooping from coach to coach; with clang and clack,

Touches and tests, and listens to the wheels.

Guard sounds a warning whistle, points to the clock

With brandished flag, and on his folded flock

Claps the last door: the monster grunts; ‘Enough!’

Tightening his load of links with pant and puff.

Under the arch, then forth into blue day;

Glide the processional windows on their way,

And glimpse the stately folk who sit at ease

To view the world like kings taking the seas

In prosperous weather: drifting banners tell

Their progress to the counties; with them goes

The clamour of their journeying; while those

Who sped them stand to wave a last farewell.

A poem written by:

SIEGFRIED SASSOON

An English war poet, Sassoon was also known for his fictionalised autobiographies, praised for their evocation of English country life.

Siegfried Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 in Kent. His father was part of a Jewish merchant family, originally from Iran and India, and his mother part of the artistic Thorneycroft family. Sassoon studied at Cambridge University but left without a degree. He then lived the life of a country gentleman, hunting and playing cricket while also publishing small volumes of poetry.

In May 1915, Sassoon was commissioned into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and went to France. He impressed many with his bravery in the front line and was given the nickname 'Mad Jack' for his near-suicidal exploits. He was decorated twice. His brother Hamo was killed in November 1915 at Gallipoli.

In the summer of 1916, Sassoon was sent to England to recover from fever. He went back to the front, but was wounded in April 1917 and returned home. Meetings with several prominent pacifists, including Bertrand Russell, had reinforced his growing disillusionment with the war and in June 1917 he wrote a letter that was published in the Times in which he said that the war was being deliberately and unnecessarily prolonged by the government. As a decorated war hero and published poet, this caused public outrage. It was only his friend and fellow poet, Robert Graves, who prevented him from being court-martialled by convincing the authorities that Sassoon had shell-shock. He was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. Here he met, and greatly influenced, Wilfred Owen. Both men returned to the front where Owen was killed in 1918. Sassoon was posted to Palestine and then returned to France, where he was again wounded, spending the remainder of the war in England. Many of his war poems were published in The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack (1918).

After the war Sassoon spent a brief period as literary editor of the Daily Herald before going to the United States, travelling the length and breadth of the country on a speaking tour. He then started writing the near-autobiographical novel Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man (1928). It was an immediate success, and was followed by others including Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Sherston's Progress (1936). Sassoon had a number of homosexual affairs but in 1933 surprised many of his friends by marrying Hester Gatty. They had a son, George, but the marriage broke down after World War Two.

He continued to write both prose and poetry. In 1957, he was received into the Catholic church. He died on 1 September 1967.