Highfield High School
Battlefields Visit to Northern France and Belgium 2003
Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915)
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.
"This
sonnet was found in the author's kit sent home from France after his
death."
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