Thanks.
I have seen what the poem describes. It is so sad.
“Take up our quarrel with the foe” Between 1914 to 1945 hordes of Europeans did just that. The result was that the very best of two generations in Russia, Germany, Britain,France, Italy, Spain and most of Europe were slaughtered. The dead do not procreate or contribute. The result was severe if not lethal blow to Western civilization. Perhaps that is message we should ponder on Memorial Day.
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
“How to Die”
Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns;
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.
You’d think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they’ve been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
“Anthem for a Doomed Youth”
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
—Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
“Dulce et Decorum Est “
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Herbert Read (1893-1968)
“The Happy Warrior”
His wild heart beats with painful sobs,
His strin’d hands clench an ice-cold rifle,
His aching jaws grip a hot parch’d tongue,
His wide eyes search unconsciously.
He cannot shriek.
Bloody saliva
Dribbles down his shapeless jacket.
I saw him stab
And stab again
A well-killed Boche.
This is the happy warrior,
This is he...
W.N.Hodgson (1893-1916)
“Before Action”
By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening’s benison,
By that last sunset touch that lay
Upon the hills where day was done,
By beauty lavisghly outpoured
And blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that I have lived
Make me a solider, Lord.
By all of man’s hopes and fears,
And all the wonders poets sing,
The laughter of unclouded years,
And every sad and lovely thing;
By the romantic ages stored
With high endeavor that was his,
By all his mad catastrophes
Make me a man, O Lord.
I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of Thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say goodbye to all of this;—
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.
Wilfred Gibson (1878-1962)
“Back”
They ask me where I’ve been,
And what I’ve done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn’t I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands...
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
“MCMXIV”
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheats’ restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word—the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
My sister and I took Mom to see Dad at fort Snelling on Saturday. She can’t get out and walk to the grave anymore (she’s 95). So, my sister and I take the flowers to the grave and Itake pictures and then show them to Mom when we get back to the car.
We get back, I open the door and she’s looking off through the tree at the rows of American flags that have been posted along the road of the cemetary and she is reciting...
In Flanders Fields.
Beautiful. When I was 4 and my sister was 9 (in the 40’s), she had to memorize this for school. What happened was I heard it so much and was so mesmerized by it, I memorized it before she did. The words have never left me.
Thanks .When the late Col McCormick owned the Chicago Tribune that poem printed in color would be reproduced till his death every Memorial Day May 30th on the newspaper’s front page. He had command of one of the Regiments in the “Big Red One” 1st division and named his estate after the battle of Cantigny which is now a state park I believe..
Thank you for posting this. I’ve been distributing the Poppy at the same location for the past 10 years or so. I have told the story of the Poppy to many a child, and have a handful or so of them come back each year to get their Poppy and tell me the story.....
A Flanders Field has been set up in the town I grew up in every Memorial Day since 1960. White crosses and red poppies. I remember helping my mom and her auxiliary do this a few years after that, and it’s been my abiding memory of Memorial Day ever since.
Remembering all who served, and sacrificed...
Joyce Kilmer [’Trees’] was killed in action in France WW I.
Thank you for posting this — one of the most beautiful and devastating poems ever.
Hopefully, someday people will wonder why these kinds of poems were ever written.