Poppies and gas masks
A memorial wreath for war poets and the like
Tyne Cot cemetery, Belgium
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.
In Flanders Fields John McCrae, 1872-1918 d. pneumonia on active service, France
[The flowers'] disappearance, in the song Where Have All The Flowers Gone, stands for the loss of lives on the battlefield.
Wordsworth Dictionary of Symbolism
"red flowers symbolize death of young men"
Wordsworth Dictionary of Symbolism
But still he
died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.
Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers –
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.
Ivor Gurney, To His Love
Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,
And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots…
…"Pushing up daisies" is their creed, you know.
…I shall be better off with plants that share
More peaceably the meadow and the shower.
Wilfred Owen, A Terre 1893-1918, killed Sambre Canal.
Who made the
Law that men should die in meadows?
Who spake the word that blood should splash in lanes?
Who gave it forth that gardens should be bone-yards?
Who spread the hills with flesh, and blood, and brains?
Who made the Law?
Who made the
Law that Death should stalk the village?
Who spake the word to kill among the sheaves?
Who gave it forth that death should lurk in hedgerows?
Who flung the dead among the fallen leaves?
Who made the Law?
…But
who made the Law? the Trees shall whisper to him:
‘See, see the blood – the splashes on our bark!’
Leslie Coulson, Who Made The Law? 1889-1916 d. of wounds, The Somme
Poppies slightly out-of-focus and farmcarts bringing in the peaceful dead.
Adrian Henri, Great War Poems 5