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The Death Bed Summary & Analysis
by Siegfried Sassoon

The Death Bed Summary & Analysis
by Siegfried Sassoon

  • Introduction
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
  • Poetic Devices
  • Vocabulary & References
  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
  • Download PDF
  • Download Teacher Edition
  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “The Death Bed”

1He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped

2Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;

3Aqueous like floating rays of amber light, 

4Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.

5Silence and safety; and his mortal shore

6Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

7Someone was holding water to his mouth.

8He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped

9Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot

10The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.

11Water—calm, sliding green above the weir;

12Water—a sky-lit alley for his boat, 

13Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers

14And shaken hues of summer: drifting down, 

15He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

16Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,

17Blowing the curtain to a gummering curve.

18Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars

19Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;

20Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,

21Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

22Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;

23Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;

24Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers

25That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps

26Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace, 

27Gently and slowly washing life away.

28He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain

29Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore

30His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.

31But someone was beside him; soon he lay

32Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.

33And death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared. 

34Light many lamps and gather round his bed.

35Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.

36Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.

37He's young; he hated war; how should he die

38When cruel old campaigners win safe through?

39But death replied: “I choose him.” So he went,

40And there was silence in the summer night;

41Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.

42Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.

The Full Text of “The Death Bed”

1He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped

2Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;

3Aqueous like floating rays of amber light, 

4Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.

5Silence and safety; and his mortal shore

6Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

7Someone was holding water to his mouth.

8He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped

9Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot

10The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.

11Water—calm, sliding green above the weir;

12Water—a sky-lit alley for his boat, 

13Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers

14And shaken hues of summer: drifting down, 

15He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

16Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,

17Blowing the curtain to a gummering curve.

18Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars

19Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;

20Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,

21Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

22Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;

23Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;

24Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers

25That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps

26Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace, 

27Gently and slowly washing life away.

28He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain

29Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore

30His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.

31But someone was beside him; soon he lay

32Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.

33And death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared. 

34Light many lamps and gather round his bed.

35Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.

36Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.

37He's young; he hated war; how should he die

38When cruel old campaigners win safe through?

39But death replied: “I choose him.” So he went,

40And there was silence in the summer night;

41Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.

42Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.

  • “The Death Bed” Introduction

    • First published in Siegfried Sassoon's 1917 book The Old Huntsman, "The Death Bed" depicts a young wounded soldier as he lies dying. As the soldier slips in and out of consciousness, it seems as if he's resting peacefully—but soon terrible pain grips him, and death, in personified form, arrives to take him away in spite of his youth. The poem ends with the far-off "thudding of the guns," a sound that implies this unfortunate young man won't be the last to die in the futile, bloody First World War.

  • “The Death Bed” Summary

    • A young man drifts in and out of sleep; silence surrounds him like a sturdy wall. He feels floaty, as if he is a ray of golden light hitting water. Asleep, he feels as if he's flying, and trembles. Everything seems quiet and safe. His consciousness is like a coastline, towards which death, like a strange tide, draws in ever closer.

      Somebody gives the man a drink of water. He swallows it weakly. He moans in pain and slips into unconsciousness (described as a shift from a shadowy red atmosphere towards darkness). For a moment, he forgets about the drug-numbed pain of his war injury. He thinks of calm, green water flowing over a dam. He imagines he's on a boat, floating down a sunny stream. He hears birdsong, and sees flowers reflecting on the water, and the colors of summer rippling on the surface. He drifts further, rowing peacefully. He sighs and sleeps.

      It is nighttime and wind is blowing through the hospital, making the curtain billow and ripple. It's night, but the dying man can't see anything. He can't see the twinkling stars among the ghost-like clouds traveling across the sky. All he sees is a strange mix of colors, purple, bright red, and green, which flash across his failing eyes.

      The dying man hears rain falling in the dark. All at once he can smell this rain, and hear it as a kind of gentle music. He thinks of warm rain falling on flowers, or brief showers that drench the forest. This rain is not the punishing kind that follows thunder, but a gentle shower, rinsing the last of his life away.

      The dying man wriggles, suddenly uncomfortable. Just then a great, beast-like pain jumps at him. It grabs and tears at his dreams with its sharp claws and teeth. He senses somebody next to him as that evil pain subsides, leaving him frightened. Death has arrived, and steps closer to him to take a long, lingering look.

      Reader, light up the man's room and attend to him. Give him your eyes, your blood, and your desire to live. Speak to him and wake him up—he can still be saved. This man was merely a boy and hated war. How can it be fair that he dies while the cold-hearted (and old) authorities who sent him here stay safe and warm?

      Death answers: "I choose this man." And so the wounded soldier dies, and the summer night falls quiet. Everything seems silent and safe as the dying man slips into the big sleep of death. Then there's a sound in the distance: the dull thud of firing guns.

  • “The Death Bed” Themes

    • Theme The Tragedy of War

      The Tragedy of War

      "The Deathbed" imagines the last moments of a young World War I soldier as he lies dying in the hospital. Wounded and drugged into a stupor, the soldier drifts in and out of consciousness and almost passes peacefully—until, at last, he suffers a terrible spasm of pain and meets Death face to face. Through this young man’s poignant and terrible death, the poem highlights the tragedy, senselessness, and cruelty of war.

      At the outset, the poem deceptively paints the young soldier’s hospital deathbed as a peaceful, gentle place to be: a place of rest that offers some relief from all the suffering the war has inflicted on him. The speaker’s descriptive language paints the soldier’s imminent death in almost romantic terms. Silence surrounds the man "like floating rays of amber light," and "his mortal shore" is lapped gently by "moonless waves of death." Drugged to sleep, he can even forget the "throb and ache" of the war wound that’s killing him.

      Soon enough, the soldier's mind drifts towards idyllic pictures of a day out boating, perhaps a memory from his pre-war life. He feels himself floating on "calm" water, listening to birdsong. He's surrounded by flowers and the bright "hues of summer." In a word, he is "contented." He feels a "trickling peace," and it looks like this is the end.

      But just when he’s about to die, the young soldier suffers a dreadful spasm of pain. The poem thus catches the reader by surprise, reminding them of the true horrors of war: not even this poor soldier’s inner world can escape war’s destruction. The pain of the soldier’s wounds attacks him like an animal, tearing up his peaceful visions "with grinding claws and fangs." The image suggests that not just the soldier’s body, but his dreams are broken by the war that has killed him.

      That point becomes even clearer when a personified death arrives to "choose" the soldier. Here, the speaker turns to the reader in horror, asking if anyone can offer the poor soldier "eyes, warm blood, and will to live," and wonders why he must die when "cruel old campaigners"—the powerful men in charge of the war—remain "safe." But of course, there are no answers and no explanations forthcoming: the poor soldier’s death, the poem insists through these rhetorical questions, was completely senseless.

      This awful tragedy, the poem concludes, is just one among countless thousands, and it won’t stop there. The war will go on and on in spite of its obvious pointlessness and cruelty. As Death leads the soldier away, there’s the sound of the "thudding of the guns" in the distance—a sound that implies a tragic continuation of war, making it clear that humanity learns nothing from the deaths so many of its own children.

      The poem thus ends by evoking the sheer unrelenting tragedy of war—highlighting that it's the innocent young who often suffer most, and that their deaths are a complete waste of precious human life.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Death Bed”

    • Lines 1-6

      He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
      Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
      Aqueous like floating rays of amber light, 
      Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.
      Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
      Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

      This poem describes the final moments in the life of a young WWI soldier as he lies wounded and dying in a hospital. The opening stanza sets the scene, creating an evocative and mysterious picture of the man's state of mind. The speaker is an omniscient narrator, able to describe the dying man's thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

      At first, the whole death bed experience seems quite peaceful (albeit very strange!). In these opening lines, the dying man drifts in and out of consciousness. Here (and throughout the poem) metaphors, similes, and images fly thick and fast, evoking the man's fractured, dreamlike mental state.

      The man is surrounded by silence, which "heap[s]" around him like sturdy "walls."

      • On the one hand, this suggests a kind of safety and perhaps even comfort in this state (especially compared to the atrocious soundscape of the battlefield that he presumably experienced before arriving at this hospital).
      • Alternatively, this might suggest that his hearing has been damaged from serving in the war. That the silence has agency here (it actively surrounds the man) also makes him seem helpless.

      In the next line, it's not totally clear whether the simile "Aqueous like floating rays of amber light" refers to this silence or to the man's state of mind more generally. Either way, this image of watery, golden light flowing around the man evokes both a womb-like comfort and a kind of heavenly afterlife. It's as though the dying man is surrounded by the famous white light linked with near-death experiences. Both "aqueous" and "floating" are also at odds with the "steadfast walls" image. It's within this cocoon of total silence—within his own mind, cut off from the activity of the outside world—that he's experiencing this floating sensation.

      Then, in line 4, the speaker says that the man is "Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep." This metaphor again evokes heaven and the afterlife, portraying sleep as something comforting and angelic that flies upward.

      The speaker sums up the young man's state as "Silence and safety" in line 5. The sibilance of this phrase creates a hushed, sleepy, and peaceful tone. The man is near to death, which is cast here as a kind of ocean. The man's life, body, and consciousness, meanwhile, become a shoreline. There's no moon above, and death's dark waves steadily creep inward onto that "mortal shore"—a poetic description of death eroding the young man's consciousness/sense of self/vitality. Soon, the poem suggests, those waves will gobble him up; he will dissolve into the limitless ocean of non-being.

    • Lines 7-10

      Someone was holding water to his mouth.
      He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
      Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
      The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.

    • Lines 11-15

      Water—calm, sliding green above the weir;
      Water—a sky-lit alley for his boat, 
      Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
      And shaken hues of summer: drifting down, 
      He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

    • Lines 16-21

      Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
      Blowing the curtain to a gummering curve.
      Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
      Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
      Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
      Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

    • Lines 22-27

      Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;
      Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
      Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
      That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
      Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace, 
      Gently and slowly washing life away.

    • Lines 28-33

      He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
      Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
      His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
      But someone was beside him; soon he lay
      Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
      And death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared. 

    • Lines 34-38

      Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
      Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
      Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
      He's young; he hated war; how should he die
      When cruel old campaigners win safe through?

    • Lines 39-42

      But death replied: “I choose him.” So he went,
      And there was silence in the summer night;
      Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.
      Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.

  • “The Death Bed” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Alliteration

      This poem is full of alliteration, which helps to intensify its imagery. Sometimes, this creates a peaceful, idyllic atmosphere that is sadly too good to be true; in other moments, it does the complete opposite, conjuring up fright and horror.

      In the first two stanzas, alliteration helps lull the reader into a false sense of security. The dying man drifts in and out of consciousness:

      Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.
      Silence and safety; [...]

      These sibilant sounds feel gentle and whispery, almost like sleepy breathing.

      And the following stanza uses dense alliteration to even more musical effect:

      Water—calm, sliding green above the weir;
      Water—a sky-lit alley for his boat,
      Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
      And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
      He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

      Put simply, all of these little echoing sounds make for an extremely pretty passage. If the poem ended here, the soldier's death wouldn't seem so bad at all!

      But the whole point of this section is that it is too pretty—that is, it's not real. The comfort and security of the first two stanzas ultimately exist only to make the ending more chilling.

      Contrast the above passages with lines 29 and 30, which describe the young man's sudden pain just before he dies:

      He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
      Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
      His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.

      These grating /gr/ sounds and slap-like /p/ sounds suggest violence, and all the more so because of their contrast with the sweet sounds earlier in the poem.

      At the end, the poem returns to sibilant /s/ alliteration:

      But death replied: “I choose him.” So he went,
      And there was silence in the summer night;
      Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.

      But now these /s/ sounds don't suggest comfort, but the creepy whisper of death.

    • Caesura

    • Consonance

    • End-Stopped Line

    • Enjambment

    • Imagery

    • Metaphor

    • Parataxis

    • Personification

    • Repetition

    • Rhetorical Question

    • Simile

    • Assonance

  • "The Death Bed" Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Drowsed
    • Heaped
    • Steadfast
    • Aqueous
    • Lipped
    • Crimson
    • Opiate throb
    • Weir
    • Hues
    • Gummering
    • Wraiths
    • Queer
    • Blots
    • Scarlet
    • Pattering
    • Prowling
    • Groping
    • Rouse
    • Campaigners

    • Drifted in and out of sleep.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Death Bed”

    • Form

      "The Death Bed" is a relatively long poem broken up into stanzas of varying length. Stanzas 1, 3, 4, and 5 are sestets (that is, stanzas of six lines), the second stanza has nine lines, and the last two stanzas have five and four lines respectively.

      This erratic, unpredictable, and episodic form mirror the dying man's mind as he slips in and out of consciousness. His grip on reality is fleeting, and his dreams mingle with sensations from real life.

      It's also worth noting that the sheer length of the poem creates tension by delaying the soldier's death. There are many points where it seems like he might have died (e.g., line 15) but it's not until line 33 that death, in personified form, actually arrives. The slow pace is intentionally tortuous, providing the reader (and dying man) with false comforts that soon give way to the horror of death.

    • Meter

      "The Death Bed" uses iambic pentameter—that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. But the poem doesn't stick strictly to this rhythm. If it were metrically steady, the poem would probably feel too ordered, at odds with the dying man's wandering state of mind.

      When it stays steady, the poem's iambic meter sometimes builds a sense of calm and reassurance. Here are lines 14 and 15, in which the soldier dreams of a day out in a rowboat:

      And shak- | en hues | of sum- | mer: drift- | ing down,
      He dipped | content- | ed oars, | and sighed, | and slept.

      These rhythms are meditative and gentle, mirroring the pulsing motion of the oars in the water—an image that might be based on the soldier's memories of better days. If the poem ended here, this would be a relatively blissful way to go!

      But this metrical stability only builds a false sense of comfort that will soon be torn down. In stanza five, for instance, the dying man is suddenly gripped by horrible pain. The meter changes to mirror this moment:

      He stirred, | shifting | his bod- | y; then | the pain
      Leaped like | a prowl- | ing beast, | and gripped | and tore

      Two trochees—the DUM-da feet of "Shifting" and "Leaped like"—make this section feel metrically uneven, as if even the meter were writhing in pain. The way "Leaped" brings the stress to the front of the line is especially shocking; it's as though the poem is jumping out at the reader.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      "The Death Bed" doesn't have a rhyme scheme, making this poem a good example of blank verse: that is, it's built from unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. (More on that in the Meter section.) The lack of ordered rhyme reflects the dying man's changing state of mind: he drifts from one dream or sensation to another in abrupt shifts, without "rhyme" or reason.

  • “The Death Bed” Speaker

    • "The Death Bed" features an unidentified omniscient narrator. The speaker is thus able to portray the dying man's thoughts, feelings, and sensations as though he can see inside his mind. This allows the poem to speak clearly about the dying man's consciousness in a way that wouldn't make sense from a first-person perspective. Through the speaker, the reader has access to things that the dying man otherwise wouldn't be able to articulate (e.g., the river dream in lines 11-15).

      The poem maintains this approach until the penultimate stanza. Here, the speaker suddenly talks to the reader directly using urgent imperatives:

      Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
      Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
      Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.

      It's as though the poem feels the need to close the distance between the reader and the dying man. This poor young soldier can't speak, so the speaker has to speak for him, making for a dramatic and confrontational conclusion that cries out against the injustice of war.

  • “The Death Bed” Setting

    • The poem uses two main settings, which work like layers of the dying man's own consciousness.

      In the real world, the poem is set in a hospital for soldiers wounded in the First World War. It seems to be a windy, rainy night in the summer, but it's hard to say for sure.

      That's because the poem also takes place within the wounded soldier's own mind. The poem's imagery is dreamy, influenced by the opiates he's taken to numb his pain. In the ethereal first stanza, for instance, the soldier seems to drift through "floating rays of amber light."

      In the second stanza, these two worlds—the real and the imagined—even seem to overlap. The dying man is made to drink water, which transforms into a calm, meditative picture of boating on a river (perhaps based on a memory).

  • Literary and Historical Context of “The Death Bed”

    • Literary Context

      Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was one of the foremost poets of the First World War. Together with writers like his friends Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, Sassoon aimed to convey the realities of war—its violence, psychological impacts, waste of life, and sheer senselessness. His unflinching style implicitly rejected the patriotic sentimentalism of war poems by writers like Rupert Brooke and Jessie Pope.

      Sassoon, who served as a soldier himself, wrote a number of his early poems after he was wounded in action. During his convalescence at the Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, he also met Wilfred Owen; the two were major influences on each other and became some of the best-known poets of their generation.

      "The Death Bed" was published in Sassoon's 1917 collection, The Old Huntsman, which contained his first war poems. Wilfred Owen marveled at the collection and felt "The Death Bed" was the jewel in its crown.

      Sassoon's poetry was emphatically anti-war. For instance, "Base Details," a poem published in 1918's Counter-Attack, takes aim at those "cruel old campaigners" mentioned in line 38 here. "The Death Bed," meanwhile, takes a more intimate and sorrowful look at the costs of warfare.

      Historical Context

      The First World War was once described as "the war to end all wars"—a statement that turned out, sadly, to be untrue. Rather, it was the beginning of modern warfare: the technological advances of World War I enabled unthinkable new levels of violence, disease, and death. Approximately 10 million military personnel were killed during the conflict, with millions more civilians perishing too. Countless young men died in circumstances just like those described in this poem.

      World War I began in 1914, sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Due to a complex network of alliances and resentments, this death had a rapid knock-on effect across Europe. Soon, Great Britain, France, and Russia were fighting against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. The United States was drawn into the conflict after numerous submarine attacks on American merchant and passenger ships. After years of bloodshed, Germany eventually surrendered on November 11th, 1918.

      Sassoon served extensively in the First World War and drew on these experiences for his poetry. During his service, Sassoon developed a reputation for his courage and daredevil acts of bravery, earning the nickname Mad Jack and the prestigious Military Cross medal (which he later threw into a river in protest).

      Having seen the horrors of battle first hand, Sassoon became highly critical of those who allowed—and encouraged—the war to continue. In his own words, he argued that "no one ever, from henceforth [should] say one word in any way countenancing war [...] for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages."

  • More “The Death Bed” Resources

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