John McCrae

"Sleep, weary ones, while ye may, Sleep, oh, sleep!" Eugene Field.

I saw a city filled with lust and shame, Where men, like wolves, slunk through the grim half-light; And sudden, in the midst of it, there came

One spake amid the nations, "Let us cease From darkening with strife the fair World's light, We who are great in war be great in peace.

I saw a King, who spent his life to weave Into a nation all his great heart thought, Unsatisfied until he should achieve

The day is past and the toilers cease; The land grows dim 'mid the shadows grey, And hearts are glad, for the dark brings peace

If night should come and find me at my toil, When all Life's day I had, tho' faintly, wrought, And shallow furrows, cleft in stony soil

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky

Scarlet coats, and crash o' the band, The grey of a pauper's gown, A soldier's grave in Zululand,

There stands a hostel by a travelled way; Life is the road and Death the worthy host; Each guest he greets, nor ever lacks to say,

My lover died a century ago, Her dear heart stricken by my sland'rous breath, Wherefore the Gods forbade that I should know

Of old, like Helen, guerdon of the strong, Like Helen fair, like Helen light of word, "The spoils unto the conquerors belong.

I saw two sowers in Life's field at morn, To whom came one in angel guise and said, "Is it for labour that a man is born?

I Sleep, little eyes That brim with childish tears amid thy play,

O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear Above their heads the legions pressing on: (These fought their fight in time of bitter fear,

Here all the day she swings from tide to tide, Here all night long she tugs a rusted chain, A masterless hulk that was a ship of pride,

Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime: To-day around him surges from the silences of Time A flood of nobler music, like a river deep and broad,

". . . with two other priests; the same night he died, and was buried by the shores of the lake that bears his name." Chronicle.

The earth grows white with harvest; all day long The sickles gleam, until the darkness weaves Her web of silence o'er the thankful song

"Delicta juventutis et ignorantius ejus, quoesumus ne memineris, Domine." I left, to earth, a little maiden fair, With locks of gold, and eyes that shamed the light;

Cometh the night. The wind falls low, The trees swing slowly to and fro: Around the church the headstones grey

"It fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. And, he sat on her knees till noon,

An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers, Where every beam that broke the leaden sky Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours;

At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep, An angel mused: "Is there good or ill

Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes (I scorn your beguiling, O sea!) Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.

". . . defeated, with great loss." Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;

He wrought in poverty, the dull grey days, But with the night his little lamp-lit room Was bright with battle flame, or through a haze

Beneath her window in the fragrant night I half forget how truant years have flown Since I looked up to see her chamber-light,

Amid my books I lived the hurrying years, Disdaining kinship with my fellow man; Alike to me were human smiles and tears,

"What I spent I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have." But yesterday the tourney, all the eager joy of life, The waving of the banners, and the rattle of the spears,