Two WWI era poems to remind us what Memorial Day is about: the 1915 “In Flanders Fields” by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) Canadian Army and an American response by Moina Michael in 1918, “We Chall Keep the Faith”. Shall we?
In Flanders Fields
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.
And,
We Shall Keep the Faith
Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
The last few lines of her response indict our generation,
“Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.”
Oh, not all have failed to teach the lessons bought in blood at Flanders Field and elsewhere, but were they taught better and more widely, the traitors who are mostly running an ever-expanding anarcho-tyrannical oligarchy wouldn’t be in power today…
Keep the faith. Tell someone–today!–the truth about the rights and liberties our forefathers–and even many today–have been willing to lay down their lives to protect and defend, rights and liberties in serious jeopardy (or already abridged) by a government grown obese at the urging of the electorate.
