Poems by John McCrae

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"Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,
I saw a city filled with lust and shame,
One spake amid the nations, "Let us cease
I saw a King, who spent his life to weave
The day is past and the toilers cease;
If night should come and find me at my toil,
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Scarlet coats, and crash o' the band,
There stands a hostel by a travelled way;
My lover died a century ago,
Of old, like Helen, guerdon of the strong,
I saw two sowers in Life's field at morn,
I
O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear
Here all the day she swings from tide to tide,
Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime:
". . . with two other priests; the same night he died,
The earth grows white with harvest; all day long
"Delicta juventutis et ignorantius ejus, quoesumus ne memineris, Domine."
Cometh the night. The wind falls low,
"It fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers.
An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers,
At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep
Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes
". . . defeated, with great loss."
He wrought in poverty, the dull grey days,
Beneath her window in the fragrant night
Amid my books I lived the hurrying years,
"What I spent I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have."