ONE of the classic texts to emerge from the First World War, this nihilistic sonnet was written by a young Scotsman, barely out of his teens when he was killed by sniper fire at the Battle of Loos, 1915.
Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915) was born in Aberdeen, son of the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the university there.
SONNET, 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.
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