In the opening stanza of the poem, the speaker reflects on the deaths of those soldiers who have died during war. He says that these soldiers have died "as cattle," suggesting that they have not died dignified, humane deaths, but rather deaths that we might associate with animals. The implication is that the soldiers have been slaughtered like animals sent to an abattoir. The speaker also laments that the deaths of these soldiers are marked only with the "demented choirs of wailing shells," and, in line 8, with "bugles calling for them from sad shires."

In line 8 of of the poem the shires that the soldiers have come from are personified as "sad." This personification helps to emphasize the idea that everybody in these shires is mournful, so much so that it seems as if the places themselves are sad. There is also personification of the bugles in the phrase "bugles calling for them." The personification of the bugles here suggests that perhaps there are in fact no people, or very few people left to call for these dead soldiers, which in turn suggests that the soldiers' deaths have been lonely.

This idea that the soldiers who have died in war have died sad and lonely deaths is repeated elsewhere in the poem too. In the second stanza the speaker reflects on how these soldiers will not be given proper, ordinary funerals. There will be no altar boys to carry candles for them, and there will be no palls to cover their coffins. Instead, the speaker says, the lights to remember these soldiers will "shine" in the eyes of the "boys" left behind, and "the pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall."