In Flanders Fields

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In Flanders Fields

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.

__________________

In Flanders Fields is a fifteen line poem, in the form of a rondeau, divided into a five line stanza, followed by a four line stanza, and finishing with a six line stanza. The first stanza is written in iambic tetrameter with an AABBA rhyme scheme. The second stanza is also iambic tetrameter except for its last line, and its rhyme scheme is AABC. The third stanza is written in iambic tetrameter, excepting the sixth line, and with a rhyme scheme of AABBAC. As with the second stanza, the last line breaks with the rhyme and meter scheme that came before it.

John McCrae was  Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel in during WW1. He was inspired to write the poem on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres. The poem was published on December 8, 1915 in the London magazine, Punch. The title of the poem is derived from a common English name for the battlefields in Belgium and France.

Stanza One:

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.

The poem begins by placing the Reader in Flanders fields – the site of battle during World War 1. The picture presented by the Speaker is of a large field, marked by rows of crosses, erected to honor the fallen dead. In addition to the crosses, nature also honors the dead with rows of poppies. In part due to this poem, poppies are an official flower of remembrance for soldiers who died during this war.

In the middle of the third line, the Speaker tells us that larks fly overhead, as they did during the fight, though he says that they were “scarcely heard” at the time due to the noise of the battle. The birds then also serve as markers for remembrance, just as the crosses and poppies also do.

Stanza Two:

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.

In this stanza, the Speaker speaks on behalf of the fallen, reminding the Reader that only a few days ago, the men who died were alive and experiencing life just as they are now. The effect is to give weight to this event and its importance. Those who died are not merely metaphors for a cause, they are real people with tangible lives and histories.

That reminder thus makes the final line of the stanza all the more sobering.

Stanza Three:

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.

In this stanza, the Speaker – still speaking as one of the dead – encourages the Reader to take up arms and make certain that their sacrifice is not for nothing. The Speaker hands the torch – a metaphor for being in charge of the cause – to the Reader.

The poem ends with a haunting proclamation. The dead Speaker warns the living Reader that if he breaks faith with them, then the dead will not sleep. This can be read either as a statement that the soldiers will find no peace in the afterlife for a cause they might view as wasted or worse, betrayed. However, it can also be read as a promise to haunt the living from beyond the grave.

What is a rondeau? From poets.org:

The rondeau is a traditionally French form composed of a rhyming quintet, quatrain, and sestet. It began as a lyric form in thirteenth-century France, popular among medieval court poets and musicians. Named after the French word for “round,” the rondeau is characterized by the repeating lines of the rentrement, or refrain, and the two rhyme sounds throughout. The form was originally a musical vehicle devoted to emotional subjects such as spiritual worship, courtship, romance, and the changing of seasons. To sing of melancholy was another way of using the rondeau, but thoughts on pain and loss often turned to a cheerful c’est la vie in the final stanza.

The rondeau’s form is not difficult to recognize: as it is known and practiced today, it is composed of fifteen lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided stanzaically into a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rentrement consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the music of the rondeau, whose rhyme scheme is as follows (R representing the refrain): aabba aabR aabbaR.

Where the rentrement appears in its traditional French form, it typically does not adhere to the rhyme-scheme—in the interest of maintaining the line’s buoyancy and force. But when nineteenth-century English poets adopted the rondeau, many saw (or heard) the rentrement as more effective if rhymed and therefore more assimilated into the rest of the poem.