Hold High the Torch
Independence Day.
To citizens of the United States of America this day is a symbol of the freedoms we enjoy: freedom to think, to act, to come and go, to worship as we please, to engage in enterprise, to enjoy life in a beautiful and vastly diverse land. We benefit from these freedoms each and every day. But how often do we think of the steep price paid by the men and women who fought tyranny and bigotry to win them for us?
That price is succinctly expressed in a poem Canadian-born physician and teacher, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae*, wrote the day after burying his close friend and student, Alexis Helmer, who died at the battle front in Ypres, Belgium.
In Flanders Fields (he wrote) 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.
The second stanza is so poignant:
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.
Each man or woman who has given his or her life for our freedom lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved. Each paid the ultimate sacrifice so we who were left behind could think, act, come, go, worship, engage, and enjoy as we choose. May we each hold high the torch for which they died.
*Days after penning his poem, 27-year-old Dr. John McCrae, too, was buried…in Flanders Fields.
