His breast with wounds unnumber'd riven,
His back to earth, his face to heaven.
Memorial Day Quotes
This page is assembled from three others: War, Death and Gratitude. There is no memorial collection underneath it. One poem is filed against the day itself, Joyce Kilmer’s, in Trees and Other Poems (1914), and it opens with a bugle that, he says, is not singing of war today.
The rest is whatever the three source pages rate highest, so it leans toward poetry and toward writers who saw war up close. Several famous lines about death and sacrifice carry flags here, so read the note on a quote’s own page before you attach a name to it.
I am a soldier and unapt to weep
Or to exclaim on fortune's fickleness.
Of boasting more than of a bomb afraid,
A soldier should be modest as a maid.
Home they brought him slain with spears,
They brought him home at even-fall.
An atheist could not be as great a military leader as one who is not an atheist.
This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural."
O Lord, that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!
When I lived, I provided for every thing but death; now I must die, and am unprepared.
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
Death rides on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower.
But thousands die without or this or that,
Die, and endow a college or a cat.
Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast,
And the sleep be on thee cast
That shall ne'er know waking.