John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

• poet, physician
• born 1872 in Guelph, Ontario
• received a medical degree from the University of Toronto
• a fellow at McGill University
• during World War I, he served in the medical corps until his death from pneumonia
• his rondeau In Flanders Fields appeared in Punch in 1915
• it soon became one of the best-known poems of the war
• the collection In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (1919) was published posthumously

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

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