“Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.”

— Siegfried Sassoon

"Counter-Attack"
The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)
Context: Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,— loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

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Siegfried Sassoon23

English poet, diarist and memoirist 1886–1967

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