Remembrance Day 2018 wishes and quotes: Best poems and messages to mark Remembrance Day
REMEMBRANCE DAY 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, one of the most devastating in UK and world history. What are the best poems and quotes to mark the occasion?
Remembrance Day this year will be a century since the end of World War One, which concluded on November 11, 1918. The day has been marked for the last few weeks with red poppies sported on the lapels of observers, the proceedings for which go towards the Royal British Legion. On November 11, officials and country leaders will take to the Whitehall Cenotaph, where they will lay down wreaths of red poppies at its foot. A veteran’s march and minute’s silence will also mark the occasion, where the whole country will remember those fallen in armed conflicts.
What are the best poems for Remembrance Day?
Poems written by those interned to the trenches during the Great War can be the best way to evoke the memory of past conflict.
Here are some of the most notable poems for Remembrance Day.
The Ode of Remembrance by Laurence Binyon
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
READ MORE: WHICH SIDE SHOULD YOU WEAR THE POPPY?
In Flander’s Fields by John McCree
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.
The Soldier by 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.
READ MORE: WHERE TO MARK REMEMBRANCE DAY NEAR YOU
What are the best quotes for World War One?
World War One involved many politicians and leading figures who would go on to define the conflict, and their views have been left behind for current generations to appreciate and invoke.
Winston Churchill: “No compromise on the main purpose; no peace till victory; no pact with unrepentant wrong - that is the Declaration of July 4th, 1918.”
Woodrow Wilson: “This is a war to end all wars.”
George Santayana: ”Only the dead have seen the end of war.”