‘Where Tall Poppies Grow’~by Mary Cecil

 

 

‘Where Tall Poppies Grow’

In fields where tall the poppies grow,
Where shafts of golden sunlight dance
The buried bones of soldiers lie,
In flowering fields of France

In serried ranks they charged,
Into walls of steel and death
All the dreams that died,
With each and every breath

Young men we weep,
And cry those tears for you
Pretty girls and sweethearts,
How many now so few

Now in years of plenty,
In sunshine clear and bright
In fields where singing songbirds fly,
And hidden from our sight

What could have been,
The thoughts that linger yet
In flowering fields of poppies,
The sorrowing long regret

By
Mary Cecil

Today is the anniversary of the shots fired that killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo and triggered WW1. The appalling death toll in the trenches in France scarred a generation and ultimately led to WW2.