Friday, November 11, 2005

Armistice day

Today is the eleventh of November. On this day in 1918, at 11:00 the guns fell silent after four years of war.

At the going down of the sun.

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 beIn 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.

Rupert Brooke, War Sonnet V, The Soldier

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