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.
 
Written May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres,
by Maj. (Dr.) (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John McCrae
of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade.
Published in "Punch", December 8, 1915

 

John McCrae (1872-1918) was a Canadian physician, soldier, and poet. He contributed verses to Canadian periodicals before WWI. But he did not become famous until 1915 when he published 'In Flanders Fields' in Punch, an English magazine. His poems were published after his death under the title 'IN FLANDERS FIELDS, AND OTHER POEMS' (1919).

McCrae was born at Guelph, Ontario, and was graduated from the University of Toronto. In 1900, he became a pathologist at McGill University and at Montreal General Hospital. As the chief medical officer at a general hospital in Boulogne, France, in WWI, he witnessed the suffering and death he wrote about. He died of pneumonia 10 months before the end of WWI.

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