Readings · Poems
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae · 15 lines
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.
About this reading
This poem first appeared in Punch on December 8, 1915, with no signature. The book of 1919 that takes its title from it names the writer as Lieut.-Col. John McCrae, M.D., and the essay in that book says the lines were unmistakably his. The dead speak from among the poppies and the crosses, and ask the living to take up their quarrel.
Punch printed the poem without the writer's name. The book of 1919, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, sets a comma after "and now we lie", and reproduces a copy in McCrae's hand whose first line reads "grow" for "blow".
- First published
- 1915
- Text from
- Punch, or the London Charivari, December 8, 1915 (London)
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