Marlborough, and Other Poems

“When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"When you see millions of the mouthless deadAcross 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 knowIt 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 youPerceive 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

“(...) I only knowThat when I have a son of mine,He shan't be made to droop and pine,Bound down and forced by rule and rodTo serve a God who is no God.But I'll put custom on the shelfAnd make him find his God himself.Perhaps he'll find him in a tree,Some hollow trunk, where you can see.Perhaps the daisies in the sodWill open out and show him God.Or will he meet him in the roar Of breakers as they beat the shore?Or in the spiky stars that shine?Or in the rain (where I found mine)?Or in the city's giant moan?- A God who will be all his own.To whom he can address a prayerAnd love him, for he is so fair,And see with eyes that are not dimAnd build a temple to meet for him.””

— Charles Hamilton Sorley