Remembrance Day

[financeguy]

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.




No Man's Land by Eric Bogle

Well, how do you do Pvt. Wm. McBride?
Do you mind if I sit down here by your grave side?
I’ve been walking all day in the hot summer sun,
walking all day and I’m nearly done.

I can see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
when you joined the glorious fallen in 1916.
Well, I hope you died quick. I hope you died clean.
For Wm. McBride was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o’er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing the Last Posting Chorus?
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?

Did you leave a wife or a sweet heart behind?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in 1916
in some faithful heart are you every nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name
entombed forever behind a glass pane
in an old photograph torn and tattered and stained
and fading to yellow in a bound leather frame?

Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o’er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing the Last Posting Chorus?
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?

The sun’s shining down on these green fields of France.
The warm winds blow gently and the red poppies dance.
Trenches have vanished under the plow,
There’s no gas, no barbed wire or guns firing loud.

But here in the graveyard that is ever No Man’s Land
Countless white crosses in mute witness stand
to man’s pained indifference to his fellow man,
and a whole generation that’s butchered and damned.

Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o’er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing the Last Posting Chorus?
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?

Can’t help wondering for Wm. McBride,
Did all those who died here know just why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you The Cause?
Did you really believe that war would end wars?

Oh the suffering and the sorrow and the glory and shame
The killing and the dying was all done in vain.
For Wm McBride it all happened again
and again and again and again and again.

Did they beat the drum slowly?
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o’er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing the Last Posting Chorus?
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?

Did the bugles sing the Last Posting Chorus?
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?

 

[trevster2k]

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[Angela Harlem]

They shall not grow old as we who 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.

 

[Dreadsox]

Peace


Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

 

[financeguy]

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by W.B Yeats


Quote:
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.



Soliloquy by Francis Ledwidge (1891-1917)

Quote:
When I was young I had a care
Lest I should cheat me of my share
Of that which makes it sweet to strive
For life, and dying still survive,
A name in sunshine written higher
Than lark or poet dare aspire.
But I grew weary doing well.
Besides, 'twas sweeter in that hell,
Down with the loud banditti people
Who robbed the orchards, climbed the steeple
For jackdaws' eyes and made the cock
Crow ere 'twas daylight on the clock.
I was so very bad the neighbours
Spoke of me at their daily labours.

And now I'm drinking wine in France,
The helpless child of circumstance.
To-morrow will be loud with war,
How will I be accounted for?
It is too late now to retrieve
A fallen dream, too late to grieve
A name unmade, but not too late
To thank the gods for what is great;
A keen-edged sword, a soldier's heart,
Is greater than a poet's art.
And greater than a poet's fame
A little grave that has no name.



In memory of the lions led by Donkeys.

 

[unforgettableFOXfire]

I know a lot of people hate Whitman... but, they can bugger off. An everyman, for every age, writing about things that relate to everyone.


Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters, Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin -- I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
1865-66, 1881

 

[the iron horse]

Freedom is never free.


Much remembrance and thankfullness,
to all who paid the ultimate price.

 

[anitram]

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