The Fields of Flanders

by E. Nesbit

The Fields of Flanders reflects the anger and loss that "Victory" brought families of the ten million soldiers who died in World War I. It was published in Nesbit's poetry collection, Many Voices (1922).

An illustration for the story The Fields of Flanders by the author E. Nesbit — Belgium children watch soldiers pass, 1915

Last year the fields were all glad and gay
With silver daisies and silver may;
There were kingcups gold by the river’s edge
And primrose stars under every hedge.

This year the fields are trampled and brown,
The hedges are broken and beaten down,
And where the primroses used to grow
Are little black crosses set in a row.

And the flower of hopes, and the flowers of dreams,
The noble, fruitful, beautiful schemes,
The tree of life with its fruit and bud,
Are trampled down in the mud and the blood.

The changing seasons will bring again
The magic of Spring to our wood and plain:
Though the Spring be so green as never was seen
The crosses will still be black in the green.

The God of battles shall judge the foe
Who trampled our country and laid her low . . .
God! hold our hands on the reckoning day,
Lest all we owe them we should repay.

1915.

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