Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge; so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many

Sighs, shorts and frequent were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

T.S. Eliot wrote this in The Waste Land in 1922 and it kept running in my head as we joined the vast, vast crowds of visitors at this installation at the Tower of London, appropriately just before All Soul’s day.

“Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” is a commemoration of the Great War, the First World War, 1914-1918, the hundredth anniversary of which is being observed everywhere in Britain right now. 888,246 ceramic poppies have been planted in the dry moat of the Tower of London, one poppy for each British military man or woman who died in World War I. The installation opened on August 5th, the day the war began in 1914, and will end on November 11th, the day of the Armistice. November 11th is always solemnly observed as Remembrance Day in Britain. This installation is a collaboration between ceramic artist Paul Cummins and theatre stage designer Tom Piper. The poppies are made by volunteers and are for sale to the public to support military charities. They’ve completely sold out.

This phenomenal work of public art has captured the attention of everyone in Great Britain. I am only going to write that it is a very moving experience to view it, and in the company of so many serious, attentive people.

Instead of giving my views, I thought I would offer the commentary of those who served in this war and wrote about it.

From Flanders Fields by James McCrae in 1915:

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.

And the last word is from Wilfred Owen in 1918 from Pro Patria Mori: (which, roughly translated from Virgil, means: “Sweet and proper it is to die for one’s country.”)

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est

Pro Patria Mori.