The poem
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." The 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.
Mouthless dead
Then I will be the first to comment. Odd that none has done so before, because it is a very striking, astringent poem. It is in contrast to, say, the sugary words of Rupert Brooke (my father who fought in WWI thought otherwise), and more visceral than Wilfrid Owen. He gets outside his own fate with the line about better men have died before. Of course they have. The poem has a deep ring of truth. Thank you for it.