Monday 28 January 2008

On the battlefield with John McCrae

In 1914 the Austrian war poet, pharmacist and field-medic Georg Trakl (see below) committed suicide in a psychiatric ward, at the second attempt, after terrible wartime experiences on the Eastern Front in Galicia. On the other side of the great European bloodstain, on the Western Front, the Canadian poet and doctor John McCrae died of pneumonia on this day, January 28th, 90 years ago. In rememberance of the 10,000,000 men who perished in the 1914 - 1918 War, a war which finally ended as a result of the German Navy going on strike, the Poet-in-Residence blogspot presents McCrae's best-known poem 'In Flanders Fields' and also his poem 'The Unconquered Dead'.

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 your 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.


The Unconquered Dead
"...defeated, with great loss."


Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.

That day of battle in the dusty heat
We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
And we the harvest of their garnering.

Some yielded, No, not we! Not we, we swear
By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill
Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,
Was ours to keep; and lo! we have it still.

We might have yielded, even we, but death
Came for our helper; like a sudden flood
The crashing darkness fell; our painful breath
We drew with gasps amid the choking blood.

The roar fell faint and farther off, and soon
Sank to a foolish humming in our ears,
Like crickets in the long, hot afternoon
Among the wheat fields of the olden years.

Before our eyes a boundless wall of red
Shot through by sudden streaks of jagged pain!
Then a slow-gathering darkness overhead
And rest came on us like a quiet rain.

Not we the conquered! Not to us the shame,
Who hold our earthen ramparts, nor shall cease
To hold them ever; victors we, who came
In that fierce moment to our honoured peace.

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