The 100 Year Anniversary of Armistice Day--Poems

A field of poppies

Yesterday, we marked the 100th anniversary of the signing of the armistice of WWI. The famed phrase, ...on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th  month..., is one many who honor the fallen of that war and others find familiar. 

There were myriad poets who wrote about that war, the war that was supposed to be the end of all wars. One of the most famous poems is In Flanders Fields written by John McCrae, a Canadian. He penned the poignant words after conducting the funeral of one of the men in his company who had been killed. 

There are many others with words that were written with swelling emotion in the middle of the conflict and others by someone waiting in fear at home. Why were these poems so acclaimed and remembered? I think one reason is so that we remember the horror war brings and hope to never see it again. Another is that the poets wrote with heartfelt emotion which invoked those emotions in the readers. That so many get resurrected every year on Veterans Day and are used by teachers in schools in present-day shows the lasting quality of the works and our need to remember. 

The National WWI Museum in Kansas City, MO is a must-see if you are in that area. To enter the museum, one crosses over a glass bridge which has a field of poppies beneath it. What a preparation for what the visitor is about to encounter inside. A short video about what they have done to commemorate this anniversary is worth watching.

Here are three poems that evolved from the horrors of that war fought 100+ years ago. The first is one you probably know. The second talks about the regular soldiers and the third shows us a typical morning and a solider who sees a rat that moves from one side of the conflict to the other, a simple observation with great meaning. 

In Flanders Fields

by 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.


Dreamers
by Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.


Break of Day in the Trenches
By Isaac Rosenberg

The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe—
Just a little white with the dust.