Remembrance day 2018: What are the best poems and quotes for November 11?
REMEMBRANCE Day 2018 is coming in six days and the country is readying to commemorate the fallen in a special 100 year anniversary. What are the best poems and quotes for November 11?
Royals watch Festival of Remembrance at Royal Albert Hall
November 11 marks Remembrance day for the UK, where the country gathers to mourn fallen soldiers from World War I and World War II.
Normally, the date is marked with silence and solemn ceremony from officials, where wreaths of poppies are laid at the cenotaph.
Those in quiet remembrance may also wish to turn towards the appropriate literature, with poems and quotes from the depths of war itself.
Some of the best available poems and quotes have been compiled below to help you appropriately mark the occasion.
What are the best poems for Remembrance Day?
The best poems for Remembrance Day have been written by those once confined to the trenches, and a small selection is included below.
Dreamers - Siegfried Sassoon
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
READ MORE: WHAT SIDE SHOULD YOU WEAR YOUR POPPY - LEFT OR RIGHT?
The Soldier - Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
In Flanders’ Fields - 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.
Theresa May sits with royals at Festival of Remembrance
Best Quotes for Remembrance Day 2018
The best quotes for Remembrance Day are not necessarily straight from the soldiers who fought during the war, but those who remember them.
Among these are famed poets and politicians living in the aftermath of the devastation, and those who felt the most immediate impacts.
Winston Churchill was one who at the end of the war Minister of Munitions, a prominent role in the incumbent government.
He said on the 1918 Armistice: “No compromise on the main purpose; no peace till victory; no pact with unrepentant wrong - that is the Declaration of July 4th, 1918.”
British Diplomat Harold Nicolson also remarked on the Armistice as it was put into effect.
He said: "We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal Peace. There was about us the halo of some divine mission. We were bent on doing great, permanent, noble things."
American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou also provided important remarks on the nature of war.
She said: ”How important it is for us to recognise and celebrate our heroes and she-roes."