In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae, May 1915
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.
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5 comments
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November 11, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Stavros
A classic. World War I produced some of the hardest hitting, most beautiful poetry I’ve ever read. I especially like this one by Wilfred Owen:
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 a 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 zest13
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
November 12, 2007 at 5:25 pm
adifferentvoice
Stavros, it’s fast becoming a poetry fest, which is wonderful! Thank you for reminding me of a poem which I know but may have chosen to forget. I have a real horror of these lines, and my eye went straight to them:
“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,”
and especially the “froth-corrupted lungs”.
I think your poem is better than mine, it conveys the true horror as mine fails to. I was lacking inspiration on Sunday; we went to the wonderful “In Flanders Fields” museum (http://www.inflandersfields.be/#gedicht) as part of a battlefield tour with my daughters and mother-in-law a couple of years ago. Hence my poem …
Thinking about it, I think yours was read aloud in the museum too – with green, smelly smoke effects. I remember the shout of “Gas, gas”. Each museum visitor follows a character through the museum and thus through the war: mine was awful, too sad. Though my character had survived, the price he paid afterwards was terrible. I cried, as I did at the war cemetery too, much to my daughters’ bewilderment. We sat outside afterwards in the sunshine of the Ypres square next to the museum, eating chips, and my husband commented that the freedom we were enjoying – to eat chips there – was why the war was fought.
Exactly twenty years earlier I’d just arrived in Brussels to work on a six-month training contract with the European Commission. Knowing nobody, it was natural to gravitate towards other Britons, especially other British lawyers doing the same as me. Four of us drove to the Battlefields on Armistice Day. It was very cold, and the fog was so thick that you quickly lost each other. We went to Vimy Ridge and clambered about the trenches, getting very cold. One of us had a mother who was an English teacher and she had supplied several books of poetry, so we read those. The same new friend had also brought his bagpipes, and so he played them in the fog in the trenches before we went to a memorial service in the fog at the Menin Gate in Ypres. I remember that as we all drove home the bagpiper said that he wished he had fought in a war, and I felt shocked. Dulce et Decorum est …
I married the bagpiper a while later. And that visit – along with many other experiences I had in the six months in Brussels – helped shape my commitment to the European Union.
November 13, 2007 at 1:57 am
Stavros
When I was in London many years ago I remember seeing the long list of names of the World War I dead on memorial tablets, almost everywhere I turned. Losing an entire generation of young men is not easily processed by people like us who really have no conception of what it means. This poem hit me right between the eyes when I read it and I have never been able to forget it since.
I think playing the bagpipes in the foggy trenches on Armistice day was a fitting and sentimental tribute to those young men who left their youth on that field. Don’t be too hard on the bagpiper, most of us (men) have said the same thing at some point in our lives. I remember making a similar statement, except I made the mistake of saying it in front of a veteran of three wars, when I was a wet behind the ears Marine of nineteen. He just looked at me, grinned and said, “sure you do kid.”
November 13, 2007 at 8:47 am
adifferentvoice
Your comments add a great deal to my blog and my enjoyment of it. I’m quite sure other readers agree. Thank you.
November 13, 2007 at 3:26 pm
The Bagpiper
Like Stavros’s veteran, you had the good manners to conceal your shock very well – so well that I recollect you agreeing with me! It was a special day anyway, thanks for bringing it back.