In Flanders Fields

It's a day dear to me. Thank you to all who serve.

Beautiful. Thank you.

"In Flander's Fields" is a beautiful poem.

The recording is equally beautiful. Thanks Kevin and to others who have posted poems.

Seems strange to be posting something in this thread from a children's book, but I'm odd anyway.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote the beloved Anne of Green Gables books, confronts WWI head on in Rilla of Ingleside when Anne's sons are deployed to the battlefields of Europe. She wrote a poem called The Piper, attributing it to Anne's son Walter, that has always stayed with me. She sets it up like this:

"Before this war is over," he said--or something said through his lips --"every man and woman and child in Canada will feel it--you, Mary, will feel it--feel it to your heart's core. You will weep tears of blood over it. The Piper has come--and he will pipe until every corner of the world has heard his awful and irresistible music. It will be years before the dance of death is over--years, Mary. And in those years millions of hearts will break."

"Aren't you painting it rather strong, Walter?" asked Harvey Crawford, coming up just then. "This war won't last for years--it'll be over in a month or two. England will just wipe Germany off the map in no time."

* * *

"Do you think a war for which Germany has been preparing for twenty years will be over in a few weeks?" said Walter passionately. "This isn't a paltry struggle in a Balkan corner, Harvey. It is a death grapple. Germany comes to conquer or to die. And do you know what will happen if she conquers? Canada will be a German colony."

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Walter writes a poem, which is published. And here's the poem:

The Piper

One day the piper came down the Glen
Sweet and long and low played he!
The children followed from door to door,
No matter how those who loved might implore,
So wiling the song of his melody
As the song of a woodland rill.

Someday the piper will come again
To pipe the sons of the maple tree!
You and I will follow from door to door
Many of us will come back no more...
What matter if that Freedom still
Be the crown of each native hill?

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After word of Walter's death reaches the family, his younger sister gets a letter from him written the night before he died. He has a presentiment that he's going to be killed. But it was this part of the letter that really hits hard:

I'm satisfied. I'll never write the poems I once dreamed of writing--but I've helped to make Canada safe for the poets of the future--for the workers of the future--ay, and the dreamers, too--for if no man dreams, there will be nothing for the workers to fulfil--the future, not of Canada only but of the world--when the 'red rain' of Langemarck and Verdun shall have brought forth a golden harvest--not in a year or two, as some foolishly think, but a generation later, when the seed sown now shall have had time to germinate and grow.

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*shrug*

Just thought I'd share. For some reason, I always re-read this book (Rilla of Ingleside) on Veteran's Day. It speaks to me.

You've probably all heard this one before, but this always brings a tear to my eyes whenever I read it. It's about English losses overseas in World War One, but I think it's equally pertainable to many people and many conflicts, maybe even Afghanistan today.

For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Great posting KTC. Whenever it comes to the 11th hour of the eleventh day etc, and they have the 2 minutes silence, it always makes me tingle from head to foot.