By John McCrae
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.
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, soldier, physician, and poet, was born in 1872 in Guelph, Ont. The noted pathologist and army physician re-upped at age 41.He brought his horse Bonfire with him when he shipped overseas to serve as a field surgeon. After three years of service, McCrae died in 1918 in Wimereux, France, of pneumonia and meningitis. McCrae’s In Flanders Fields is still the most famous poem of war.