For The Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables at home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon

Analysis

The first stanza establishes a patriotic element. Binyon personifies the United Kingdom as a "mother," and British soldiers as its "children." The poem remembers the deaths of soldiers while justifying the cause of their deaths as "the cause of the free": a theme carried throughout the rest of the poem.

The monosyllabic words of the second stanza echo "solemn, funereal drums."The stanza, like the first, espouses themes of "martial glorification." It describes war as "solemn," with a "music" and "glory" and compares death to "celestial music."

The third stanza refers to soldiers marching to fight in the Battle of the Marne. It is less known than the fourth,despite occasionally being recited on Remembrance Day.The soldiers are "straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow," and though facing "odds uncounted" are "staunch to the end."

The fourth stanza of the poem was written first,and includes the best known lines in the poem.The original words "grow not old" are sometimes quoted as "not grow old." It has also been suggested that the word "condemn" should be "contemn," however "condemn" was used when the poem was first printed in The Times on 21 September 1914, and later in the anthology The Winnowing Fan: Poems of the Great War in 1914. If either publication had contained a misprint, Binyon had the chance to make an amendment. The issue has arisen in Australia, with little or no debate in other Commonwealth countries that mark Remembrance Day.The line commencing "Age shall not weary them" echoes[citation needed] (probably unconsciously) Enobarbus' description of Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra: "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale".

In the fifth stanza, Binyon speaks of loss and mourns the deaths of soldiers who left behind "familiar tables" and "laughing comrades." In the sixth stanza, the soldiers are described as achieving a sort of "bodily transcendence" in their death. Finally, the seventh stanza compares dead soldiers to stars and constellations, that remain traces of being soldiers, moving in "marches". This memorializes the dead while keeping their role as soldiers for the British Empire present; "an empire that, by association with these eternal soldiers, makes its own claims on a sort of immortality."

Source > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Fallen