The Dead

I know that In Flanders Fields is the tradional poem for Remembrance Day. The iconic stanzas most of us memorized in grade-school are eloquent and evocative, which is why I chose the title of this blog from among them.

But Rupert Brooke's The Dead has haunted my heart since I first saw the opening lines chiseled into the stone of the Memorial Arch at the Royal Military College of Canada.

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.

On this day, and every day at The Torch, we remember.