In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row.

These opening lines come from “In Flanders Fields,” a rondeau written in May 1915 by Canadian physician and officer John McCrae during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgian Flanders. McCrae served as a brigade surgeon with the Canadian Expeditionary Force and composed the poem shortly after the death of a close friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who was killed by shellfire. The imagery reflects the wartime cemeteries near the front—temporary graves marked by crosses—where poppies were observed growing in disturbed soil. The poem quickly circulated, was published later in 1915, and became one of the most influential literary texts shaping public memory of the First World War.

The couplet juxtaposes fragile natural beauty with the regimented, human-made order of mass death. Poppies “blowing” (blooming and moving in the wind) suggest life’s persistence amid devastation, while “crosses, row on row” evokes the scale and uniformity of military burial. The lines establish the poem’s elegiac tone and prepare for its dramatic shift into the voices of the dead, who speak from the battlefield graveyard. In cultural afterlife, the poppy became a potent emblem of remembrance, linking the poem’s landscape to rituals of mourning and commemoration, especially in Commonwealth countries.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.