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.
The poem resolves emphatically, the unequivocal statement that “great death” has taken the young men. The smooth flow of this final sentence matches the smoothness of the opening sentence. As harsh as it is, there can be no denial; there is no link between the living and the dead and no reaching out to cross the divide.
When you see millions of the mouthless dead