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TRAVELER, HAST THOU EVER SEEN?
Inscribed upon a crucifix,
A simple wayside shrine;
"Traveler, hast thou ever seen
So great a grief as mine?"
In Flanders Field I saw it,
Beside a stricken way;
A golden sunset lingered
Reluctantly that day.
Long shadows in the twilight,
White crosses on the plain,
Mute symbols of ten million dead
Who gave their lives in vain.
Dead trees a gaunt reminder
Of war and pain and hurt;
Deep scars across the summer fields
With poppy belts begirt.
Deep pits like pockmarks, desolate;
The scars of shot and shell;
A tale of tragic circumstance;
Foot prints of death and hell.
A woman walks along this way
Of crosses row on row
In Flanders Field, and kneels
Beside a grave where poppies grow.
And will the world remember,
Or will the world forget,
The beat of martial music,
The madness and the fret.
The grief and lonely anguish
Of mothers in all lands;
The ugly wounds of battle;
The bloodstains on the sands?
In Flanders Field I saw it,
Beside a stricken way;
A golden sunset lingered
Reluctantly that day.
I saw upon a crucifix,
A simple wayside shrine:
"Traveler, hast thou ever seen
So great a grief as mine?"
[Poem written in 1918 during Bill Stidger's experience on the frontlines in the Great War.]
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