A beautiful essay on a war that still resonates, though evermore dimly. The poppy occupies a prominent spot at the threshold of the modern age: As much a memorial to earlier ideals of conflict, destroyed by new forms of industrialized warfare, as a memorial to the soon-to-be outmoded form of popular communication that delivered the symbol to the western public’s imagination: the poem.
As for McCrea’s exhortation to carry on the torch of warfare, Yeats’s (An Irishman Foresees His Death) or Owens (Anthem for a Doomed Youth) seem to capture the historical moment better.