Poetry Sunday: In Flanders Fields

On Tuesday, we celebrate our Veterans Day. It falls on November 11 each year. Once known as Armistice Day, it commemorates the time when the guns on the Western Front of World War I, the "War to end all wars," finally fell silent in 1918.

In the midst of that war, in 1915, a Canadian doctor/soldier, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, was moved to write a poem to honor the dead of that terrible conflict. It is a poem that could speak for the dead in all wars and it speaks to us still today.

In Flanders Fields

John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row, 
That mark our place, and in the sky, 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly, 
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe! 
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high! 
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow 

In Flanders fields.