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 fore.

 

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 of home;

They have no lot in our labor 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.

 

For the Fallen

BY LAURENCE BINYON

 

Laurence Binyon wrote this poem during WWI. The poem talks about the soldiers who left their home to go to war and eventually died fighting. This poem relates to the theme of displacement because the soldiers left their home to go fight somewhere else. “England mourns for her dead across the sea,” I think here England is a metaphor to the people who mourn for their loved ones. I think that war is the best example of displacement because everything changes around you after the war and nothing gets back to the way it was before the war. Even if you are not a soldier and didn’t physically get displaced you still get affected by it some way or the other. Everything can feel displaced around you even when you’re in your hometown.