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CW79: Dulce et Decorum Est?

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.

These famous lines, from the middle of Laurence Binyon’s poem For the Fallen forms the Exhortation within many services of Remembrance and is familiar, I imagine, to most of us. In many ways, these lines encapsulate what we think of as ‘remembrance’: the dead are crystallised in some sort of eternal fallen flower of youthfulness. There is a nostalgia there, with sunrises, sunsets and the memory of loss. The poem reminds us of the need to remember those who died in war; a sacrifice for all of us who enjoy freedom and peace. The rest of the poem sets the dead of war in a universe of eternal stars; heroes who proudly went to battle singing songs and whose lives are glorified in death.

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