In Memoriam: John McCrae

by Alfred Gordon

For ever immortal "in Flanders' fields."

THERE was a singer who made song
divine

Of the green grapes of Proserpine
Love,

Born in full flower of the marvellous sea,
Was not more fair,
Sung of his voice.
Than she.

The hopeless acquiescence of all time
Once and for all was chanted in his rhyme.
Death-
Stripped equally of exultation and of dread

Grew even more pale :

White were the poppies which he sang.

Not red.

What marvel youth, with sorrow out of mind,

The perfect litany of all grief should find

In strains

So sorrowful and yet so heavily sweet ;

And perfect rest,

Twining with him the poppies in her hair,

For all youth's pains.

He whom we mourn this day, he too did make

A song of poppies, but he cried not Sleep, hut
Wake!

Red,

Red, red with blood his poppies were,

Not pale and wan

Lift up thy head !

Lift up thy head, who mournest him with me,

And what a wonder he hath wrought now see !

In one brief hour

The centuries' symbol of all sleep and de?.th

Now and for ever with immortal breath

Doth flower!

No longer bound where breasts and white
limbs show,

They grow

"Between the crosses row on row."

Sleep? O poppies red,

Made by his song more holy than the rose,

'Tis we,

We shall not sleep !

For, lo !

His word upon our inmost heart

Is graven more deeply than by all the art

Of him

Throughout all time

Lord of all rhyme,

As from the glories of a colonnade

Man turns, of old, to shrines in cloistral shade.

And youth shall kneel there

By this present shrine,

Learning a more divine

Than Proserpine.

While though his body shall in France find
rest.

Yea, the same rest France to her own brave
yields,

His soul shall stray,

By an infallible way,

Not through Elysian, but to Flanders' fields.