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  • ‘When you see millions of the mouthless dead’
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‘When you see millions of the mouthless dead’

Charles Hamilton Sorley

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, ‘They are dead.’ Then add thereto,
‘Yet many a better one has died before.’
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.


Charles Hamilton Sorley

from The Poems and Selected Letters of Charles Hamilton Sorley, edited by Hilda D. Spear (Blackness Press, 1978)

Tags:

20th century poems advice death in battle early 20th century poems pessimism Poetry By Heart Scotland post-1914 sonnets the dead World War I
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Charles Hamilton Sorley1895 - 1915

Charles Hamilton Sorley’s poetry and letters show remarkable talent and individuality for one who was only just past his teenage years when he was killed in 1915.
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