For Memorial Day, here’s a simple but powerful poem by World War I veteran Wilfrid Wilson Gipson.
Tag Archives: Memorial Day
The Heartbreak in the Heart of Things
How Weigh the Cost of the War Dead?
In “The Watchers,” Whittier honors the fallen while seeing the necessity of war to bring about freedom.
There Watched I for the Dead
In Owen’s “Unreturning,” our poem for Memorial Day, the poet excoriates those who use religion to justify warfare.
How Sleep the Brave
Memorial Day Looking back over the blog, I’m surprised that I have never posted William Collins’s “How Sleep the Brave” on Memorial Day. According to Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Collins “loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters,” and we see him merging fantasy, nature imagery, and high-minded allegory in this tribute to fallen soldiers. […]
Mourning the Mouthless Dead
Charles Hamilton Sorley, killed early in World War I, penned anti-war poetry that anticipated Wilfred Owen.
Memorial Day: I Am the Grass, I Cover All
Carl Sandburg’s outward stoicism masks a deep grief as he memorializes those killed in battle in “Grass.”