Sonnet


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
As Michael Caine would say ``Not a lot of people know about Charles Hamilton Sorley''. But the line ``It is easy to be dead'' is surely one of the great lines of all time, and we should remember him for that if for nothing else. He was one of the many who had their lives cut off in the trenches. I know about him only because my father had been at the same school as Sorley, and had been exposed to the Local Hero effect. He doesn't seem to have written anything else of any significance, but i don't think he needed to: this spine-chilling, blood-curdling little masterpiece is surely enough on its own to earn him immortality.

There's something clever about the rhythm of "their blind eyes see not your tears flow" that I haven't quite got to the bottom of yet... (is it just that the words are all monosyllables..?)

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