Remembrance Day: November 11

 

Remembrance
For ever young, in Flanders field they lie,

In peace in silent seas, on foreign shore,

In place with name unknown, in land unseen;

And we, perhaps forgetting, walk on by

Their sad memorials, and think no more

Of lives now passed, and lives that might have been.

In park and green and village marketplace

They stand, these ageing monuments – and we

Look past the loving tributes carved thereon

And never slack or slow our hurried pace

To call to mind the fading memory

Of these young men, much missed, though now long gone.

So let us now, at least, some moments take

To read the names of honoured dead, long lost

To grieving parents, children, sweethearts, wives,

The names of men who never more will wake,

Who bought us – at what sad and painful cost –

Our freedom, and indeed our very lives.

— H. Meyer

First published in The People’s Friend November 3, 2018.

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