Summary
A wounded soldier drowses in the ward, aware of the silence around him. This silence takes on various qualities: it is both unshaken and aqueous. The soldier soars and quivers on the wings of sleep, and his mortal shore is lipped by dark waves of death.
A caretaker holds water to the soldier's mouth, and he does not resist swallowing, though it makes him moan as he drops through crimson gloom to darkness. The pain of his wound is forgotten for the time being as he floats through water, which surrounds and transports him.
Night enters the ward with a gust of wind, but the soldier cannot see any stars. Strange blots of purple, scarlet, and green flicker and fade in the soldier's eyes. He can hear the gentle rain outside as it rustles through the dark and slowly washes life away.
The soldier stirs and his pain attacks him like an animal. But the soldier's caretaker is beside him, and soon the pain passes, leaving him shuddering. Death, who had stepped toward the soldier, lingers and stares.
The speaker instructs the reader to light many lamps, gather around the soldier's bed, lend him senses and energy, and speak to him. There is still a chance he can be saved. The speaker points out the hypocrisy of the cruel old campaigners who remain safe while they send young men to their deaths.
But death chooses the soldier and they depart into the summer night (Line 39). In the silence and safety that thread the veils of sleep, the thudding of guns begins to sound in the distance.
Analysis
"The Death Bed" is a poem that delves into the mind, body, and surrounding environment of a young soldier as approaches death due to a wound sustained in battle. The seven stanzas of the poem are of different lengths: the second stanza contains nine lines, the sixth stanza has five lines, the seventh stanza has four lines, and the rest of the poem's stanzas contain six lines. The poem is written in blank verse that does not strictly adhere to iambic pentameter. These formal factors contribute to an impression of the soldier's state of consciousness. He is neither here nor there, but drifting in a state of in-betweenness until death approaches.
The concept that gives the poem its name ("The Death Bed") provides the setting. Coming from Old English, the term "death bed" refers to the bed on which someone dies. In more extended usage, it can also mean the grave or the last hours of one's life. Though "death bed" is a common term, it contains interesting contradictions about death from the perspective of Western cultures. In these cultures, death is often feared and abhorred. This explains why Sassoon's war poems (which so baldly and bleakly delve into this subject) unsettled many readers. Sleep, meant to be a gentle and restful state, is paired with death in this poem. The poet takes advantage of the easeful and dreamy passages about sleep to prolong the soldier's death in the poem. Though it is not a quick and violent passing, the slow journey into death leaves a lasting impression.
In the first stanza, the poet describes contrasting images that are textured with sensory details. Silence is both "unshaken as the steadfast walls" and "Aqueous like floating rays of amber light" (Lines 2 and 3). The word "aqueous" is a dactyl: a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. Like the fluidity of water, the meter is not rigid and fixed. Water is also used as an extended metaphor throughout the poem to describe the soldier's journey through different layers of consciousness.
In the fifth line, silence is paired with safety, a pairing that is assisted by the sibilance of the repeating /s/. The man's mortal shore is "Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death," implying a kind of approaching darkness (Line 6). In this line, death is a process of drawing inward. Overall, this first stanza begins to showcase a warped reality.
In the second stanza, someone holds water to the soldier's mouth. The inflection of the phrase "was holding" marks an ongoing action, showing that this care-taking occurred continuously over a period of time. The man does not resist the water, and moans presumably in pain as he swallows and drops "Through crimson gloom to darkness" (Line 9). This darkness echoes the moonless waves from the previous stanza, showing that the man is approaching death. The "crimson gloom" represents the "opiate throb and ache that was his wound," which he forgets as he slides into a different state of consciousness (Line 10).
Water awaits the man as he drops from crimson gloom to darkness. The word "water" followed by a dash becomes an anaphora: it is "calm, sliding green above the weir" and "a sky-lit alley for his boat" (Lines 11-12). The dashes here are used to delve into the descriptions of water, but they also foreshadow the way that death will later disrupt the man's fluid state of consciousness. A "weir" is a low dam built across a river to raise the level of water upstream or regulate its flow. That the water is "calm, sliding green above the weir" indicates that it is a natural force flowing according to a human-built structure, just as the natural progression of the wounded man's life is altered by war—a human invention.
The description of water as "a sky-lit alley for his boat" evokes the beautiful and distant night sky as an accessible form of transportation (Line 12). This beautiful description is continued in the following lines: "Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers / And shaken hues of summer: drifting down, / He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept" (Lines 13-15). The plosive alliteration of the /b/ in "Bird-voiced, and bordered" gives a pulse of sound, emphasizing the water's active presence. Though water is not personified, it does have a voice. The water is also colored with the "shaken hues of summer," giving a sense of optimism (Line 14). The man drifts further down and dips his oars into the water. The description "contented oars" is a transferred epithet, indicating that it is the man himself who is content. Overall, this stanza is a painterly evocation of the man's journey toward sleep and death.
Night arrives in the ward with a gust of wind. Though the setting has not yet been specified as a military hospital, the word "ward" brings us closer. The repetition of the /w/ in "wind, was in the ward" mimics the whooshing sound of wind as it blows "the curtain to a gummering curve" (Lines 16 and 17). Just as the word "water" was repeated earlier, here the word "night" is repeated to emphasize darkness. The man is blind, unable to see the "stars / Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud" (Lines 18-19). Wraiths are something pale, thin, or insubstantial; they also have a ghostlike connotation. Strange multicolored blots of purple, scarlet, and green flicker and fade in the man's "drowning eyes" (Line 21). Whereas before the man was safely situated in a boat, here his eyes are drowning (another transferred epithet).
In the fourth stanza, the man hears rain "rustling through the dark" (Line 22). The rain's "Fragrance and passionless music" are "woven as one," a line that marries the olfactory and auditory senses (Line 23). Earlier in the poem, water was "Bird-voiced," but here it has become a "passionless music" (Lines 13 and 24). This passage has not lost the warmth of summer evoked in earlier passages: this is a "Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers / That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps / Behind the thunder" (Lines 24-26). But the earlier sense of optimism is gone.
The mention of roses further engages the reader's sense of smell. The gentleness of this rain contrasts with the fast and jarring ways in which Sassoon often writes about war. Here, his his early pre-war preference for romantic pastorals comes through. But the gentleness does not indicate safety: this rain is "a trickling peace, / Gently and slowly washing life away," foreshadowing the man's death (Lines 26-27).
In the next stanza, the man stirs in his sleep and shifts his body. His pain is personified as it leaps "like a prowling beast, and [grips] and [tears] / His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs" (Lines 29-30). The alliteration of /gr/ in these lines evokes a growling and untamable beast. It is only the presence of the unidentified caregiver that soothes the man, and "soon he lay / Shuddering because that evil thing had passed" (Lines 31-32). However, the figure of death lingers nearby. Like the man's pain, death is also personified, but it is interesting to note that the "d" in death remains lowercase. The reasoning is not yet clear.
The speaker instructs the reader to engage in acts of caregiving in the sixth stanza. These include lighting lamps and gathering around the wounded man's bed, lending him "your eyes, warm blood, and will to live," and speaking to him in order to rouse him (Lines 34-36). The lights from the lamps ward off the darkness of night that blinded the man in an earlier passage, and providing eyes lends him the sight he lost in that darkness. This stanza also gives the reader hope that the man can be saved (Line 36). Sassoon implores the reader's involvement and investment in the young soldier's survival. This is indicative of his desire for the public to be aware of the conditions of soldiers in World War I.
It is not until this fifth stanza that the context of the poem (a soldier on his death bed in a military ward) is made absolutely clear. Sassoon expresses his anger towards the military officials who give orders sending young soldiers into perilous situations while they (the officials) remain safe from zones of conflict. These lines read, "He's young; he hated war; how should he die / When cruel old campaigners win safe through?" (Lines 37-38). This points out Sassoon's position on the futility of war: how can one side win if the cost is the lives of young men such as the one in the poem?
But as expressed in other works by the poet, death is an unavoidable force. In the sixth stanza of "The Death Bed," death replies to the question posed above, saying of the wounded soldier, "'I choose him'" (Line 39). Again, the character of death is written in lowercase, perhaps suggesting a sense of removal from human matters of right and wrong. This is not a figure of death that cares about people's anguished cries for justice, but rather one who will appear and take a person when it is their time to go. After death makes this reply, the poem reads, "So he went," indicating that there is no resistance on the soldier's part (Line 39). The young soldier's death was delayed throughout the poem, with the poet providing moments of false hope. But in the end, death is inevitable, and the soldier goes easily.
The journey towards death is likened to falling asleep throughout the poem, but particularly by the repetition of the phrase "Silence and safety" (Lines 5 and 41). The sibilance in these words suggests an ease in both falling asleep and dying, but the far-off thudding of the guns at the end of the poem evokes a sense of danger (Line 42). Summer tends to be construed as a time of tranquility, warmth, and growth, but here it is paired with danger and death. The guns are specified as "the guns" in the final line, indicating that the particular conflict of World War I (despite being "far away") is capable of intruding upon anyone's life.
