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.
Life that dares send
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!
Summer grasses—
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams
I thought upon one pair of English legs
Did march three Frenchmen.
Two hands upon the breast,
And labor's done;
Two pale feet cross'd in rest,
The race is won.
See my lips tremble and my eyeballs roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!