Reflections on Remembrance Day through some poems

The Armistice day marked the end of hostilities of World War I on the 11th of November, 1918, a war that lasted for 4 years and saw the loss of about 9 million soldiers with further tens of millions of civilians dying of famine and dereliction. Millions more were severely wounded, tens of thousands of children were orphaned and the map of Europe redrawn.

Such numbers numbs the mind. As Stalin once observed, 'A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.' The danger of the human element to fade and replaced with dates and statistics is a real one. Poetry, I feel, has the ability to keep alive emotions and express them in a pure, beautiful and unfettered form. Wordsworth defined poetry as 'emotion recollected in tranquility', Rober Frost suggests poetry 'starts as a lump in the throat, where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.' It is therefore perhaps worthwhile to recall to oneself some of the best war poems to remind ourselves of the emotional rape, pillaging, offence and desecration which occurred in that war and in wars since. So that we may not forget their sacrifices and so that we may think about these matters with due respect and seriousness. 

John Seargent's painting - Gassed

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. 
                                                            - John McCrae

McCrae's popular poem resulted in the connection of poppies to remembrance day. The Canadian doctor McCrae volunteered to fight in the war, noted how poppies grew quickly around the graves of buried soldiers when he buried his friend Alexis Helmer and wrote the poem the next day.

Leave your home behind, lad,
And reach your friends your hand,
And go, and luck go with you
While Ludlow tower shall stand.
Oh, come you home of Sunday
When Ludlow streets are still
And Ludlow bells are calling
To farm and lane and mill,
Or come you home of Monday
When Ludlow market hums
And Ludlow chimes are playing
"The conquering hero comes,"
Come you home a hero,
Or come not home at all,
The lads you leave will mind you
Till Ludlow tower shall fall.
And you will list the bugle
That blows in lands of morn,
And make the foes of England
Be sorry you were born.
And you till trump of doomsday
On lands of morn may lie,
And make the hearts of comrades
Be heavy where you die.
Leave your home behind you,
Your friends by field and town:
Oh, town and field will mind you
Till Ludlow tower is down.
                                                     - A.E. Housman

Written from the standpoint of those sending their sons, brothers, lovers friends away to fight, Housman's poem is very touching indeed. A lover of the English country life and a resident of Ludlow, the poem highlights the grim resolution of a people forced to fight against tyranny and the nobility and unity of the English people. 

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? 
Only the monstrous anger of the guns. 
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle 
Can patter out their hasty orisons. 
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, 
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; 
And bugles calling for them from sad shires. 
What candles may be held to speed them all? 
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes 
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. 
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; 
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, 
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. 
                                                                   - Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen, also the author of the famous and haunting Dolce et decorum est, was a young officer who died only one week before the end of the war. His mother received his death notice only after the war has ended, whilst expecting his return. His Anthem for Doomed Youth portray the horrid and devastating butchery and the senseless loss of young life, filled with wishes and hopes and the future, with only the bursting bombs and wailing shells as their dirge as they degrade in the mud. They do not even have the chance to have their family and friends to morn them, or rather, their loved ones do not have the right to bury their boys.