About the poem

Though you have left me is a setting of an untitled love poem written by Siegfried Sassoon to his lover Glen Byam Shaw, written at a time when it was impossible to write freely about homosexual love. The poem was never published in full and was only recently rediscovered in a collection of letters by a PhD student at Warwick University.

About the poet

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) was an English poet, writer and soldier.

Untitled poem by Siegfried Sassoon

Though you have left me, I’m not yet alone:
For what you were befriends the firelit room;
And what you said remains and is my own
To make a living gladness of my gloom
The firelight leaps and shows your empty chair
And all our harmonies of speech are stilled:
But you are with me in the voiceless air
My hands are empty, but my heart is filled.

Text by Siegfried Sassoon. Copyright © 1925.