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In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae
   
In Flanders fields the poppies grow  
      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. 5
   
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: 10
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. 15
   
 

In Flanders Fields — McCrae, a Canadian, composed this poem on 3 May, 1915, the day after officiating at the funeral of his friend Alexis Helmer, during the Second Battle of Ypres (famous for being the first large-scale use of poison gas in warfare).

This poem was the most popular one of the war, and was frequently used in recruitment campaigns and bond drives in England, Canada, and the United States. To this day, red poppies are a symbol of the dead in the Great War, as seen in the memorial displayed at the Tower of London in 2014.

 
Flanders — Flanders is the northern part of Belgium, where the native language is Dutch (as opposed to southern part, where the native language is French). People from Flanders are called Flemish. Some of the most intense fighting on the western front, especially early in the war, occurred in Flanders. Fairly quickly, civilians back home in the U.K., Canada, and the United States began using the term Flanders for all of Belgium or even all of the western front.
 
poppies — Poppies are a type of flowering plant, with many species, found all over the world. The poppies found on the western front during the Great War were red. Because of gunpowder used during battle, the soil all over the western front became highly alkaline, and poppies thrive in alkaline soil. As a result, poppies sprang up everywhere, particularly on soldiers’ graves.
 
grow — McCrae originally wrote grow here, but when the magazine Punch published the poem, the editors asked McCrae if they could change this word to blow (which means bloom) and McCrae agreed. After that, McCrae used blow and grow interchangeably when hand-writing copies.
 
sleep — Here, the word refers to resting peacefully in death. McCrae, who was a trained physician, may also have intended some irony because poppies (though a different species from those on the western front) are the source of opium.