The title promises that death levels everyone, but the poem quietly argues the opposite. In the "city of the dead," the poor are denied even a ringing bell, the small public mourning that marks a life as worth noticing. Their passing goes unannounced, and the poem treats that silence as a kind of second loss.
The speaker speaks as part of a "we," and the feeling is dread. People fear the "public sand," a communal burial ground, and fear being "forced" to lie there. The word "forced" suggests that this fate isn't chosen but imposed by poverty. The closing comparison to "a little warren" is striking: a warren is where rabbits crowd together, so the image makes the dead seem packed, anonymous, almost animal.
The mood is bleak, hushed, and quietly angry. The poem's irony is that the title says one thing while the details show that even in death, money still decides who is remembered.