Charles Sorely was a Scottish poet who died at the age of just 20 in 1915 during The Great War. He is less well known than other major poets like Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg, though Robert Graves considered him one of the three best poets of the war. His works were collected after his death in a volume called 'Marlborough and Other Poems.'

I print this poem today not only because it is a fine sonnet, but also because war is much in the news, and as ever, rarely resolves anything satisfactorily. Soldiers will tell you so and civilians invariably pay the price in modern conflicts. 

 XXVII

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.