11th day of the 11th month
Nov. 11th, 2009 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebness
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
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
I'm not one for jingoism and the line under an English heaven makes me cringe a little. Furthermore, it's an obvious poem to use today.
However, the news has just reported on the five young soldiers murdered by their Afghan colleague, their bodies repatriated to the UK today. I can't begin to imagine the grief and the rage of their families, directed at the government as much as the cowardly murderer, or the pain of the lady who received an insulting missive from Gordon Brown wherein he mispelled her dead son's name. Or the families of those lost in World War I, World War II, and every conflict thereafter. The necessity and the legality of any of these wars can be argued against, but while politicians play with lives as if they were the Olympian gods, the soldiers give their own lives in earnest.
For all those who have gasped their last in some foreign field, or for those soldiers who have fought and given everything they can, thank you.
However, the news has just reported on the five young soldiers murdered by their Afghan colleague, their bodies repatriated to the UK today. I can't begin to imagine the grief and the rage of their families, directed at the government as much as the cowardly murderer, or the pain of the lady who received an insulting missive from Gordon Brown wherein he mispelled her dead son's name. Or the families of those lost in World War I, World War II, and every conflict thereafter. The necessity and the legality of any of these wars can be argued against, but while politicians play with lives as if they were the Olympian gods, the soldiers give their own lives in earnest.
For all those who have gasped their last in some foreign field, or for those soldiers who have fought and given everything they can, thank you.
