The best war poems for Remembrance Day are John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields,” the poem that made the poppy a symbol of remembrance, Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier,” and Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” Together they span the First World War, from the patriotism of 1914 to the grief and anger of the soldiers who fought it. Below are 12 poems for November 11, each with a short passage and a note on why it belongs in an act of remembrance.
Our approach: remembrance is not only about honoring sacrifice. The best readings let the dead speak for themselves, so we have placed the poems of duty beside the poems of protest, and let them argue with each other the way the war’s own poets did.
Quick Picks
- Most famous
- In Flanders Fields by John McCrae
- Best to read aloud
- In Flanders Fields, 15 lines and a natural fit for a ceremony
- Most unsparing
- Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
- Most patriotic
- The Soldier by Rupert Brooke
- Shortest
- There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale, 12 lines
- Longest
- The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson, 55 lines
Voices from the Trenches
These four poems were written by three men who served in the First World War, and none of them survived it. Read in order, they trace the war’s change in mood, from Brooke’s idealism to Owen’s fury.
1. In Flanders Fields by John McCrae (1915)
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
McCrae, a Canadian army doctor, wrote the poem in May 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres, after burying a friend. Spoken by the dead themselves, it is the poem that inspired the remembrance poppy, and it is read at ceremonies across Canada every November 11.
Read In Flanders Fields, with summary and analysis ›
2. The Soldier by Rupert Brooke (1914)
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
Brooke’s sonnet imagines a soldier’s grave abroad as a piece of home, made sacred by the body buried there. It was read from the pulpit of St Paul’s Cathedral on Easter Sunday 1915, weeks before Brooke died on his way to Gallipoli, and it remains the classic statement of the war as noble sacrifice.
Read The Soldier, with summary and analysis ›
3. Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen (1917)
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Owen describes a gas attack and a comrade dying in agony, then turns on anyone who would still call such a death “sweet and fitting.” It is often read as a reply to poems like Brooke’s, and it reminds a Remembrance Day audience what the soldiers actually endured.
Read Dulce et Decorum Est, with summary and analysis ›
4. Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen (1917)
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Owen’s sonnet asks what funeral rites exist for soldiers killed by the thousand, and finds them first in the noise of the guns, then in the silent grief of families at home. Its closing image, “each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds,” leads naturally into a two-minute silence.
Read Anthem for Doomed Youth, with summary and analysis ›
Before and After the Great War
Not every great poem of the war came from the trenches. These three were written by civilians, one on the eve of the fighting, one near its end, and one in its shattered aftermath.
5. Channel Firing by Thomas Hardy (1914)
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
Written in April 1914, months before the war began, Hardy’s poem imagines naval gunnery practice so loud that it wakes the dead in a churchyard, who think it must be Judgment Day. God tells them it is only the living, preparing for war as they always have. Few poems foresaw the coming slaughter so exactly.
Read Channel Firing, with summary and analysis ›
6. There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale (1918)
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Published in July 1918, while the fighting still raged, Teasdale’s gentle poem imagines nature carrying on after humanity has destroyed itself. The birds and the spring would not even notice we were gone. Its calm makes the loss feel larger, and it is short enough for a young reader to learn by heart.
Read There Will Come Soft Rains, with summary and analysis ›
7. The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats (1920)
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
Yeats wrote the poem in 1919, in the wreckage of the First World War and amid revolution in Russia and unrest in Ireland. It is not a battlefield poem, but it captures the sense, shared by a whole generation, that the old world had ended in 1918 and something frightening was being born.
Read The Second Coming, with summary and analysis ›
Earlier Wars
Remembrance Day began with the First World War, but it now honors those who served in every conflict. These two poems from the 19th century show how earlier poets mourned soldiers and leaders.
8. The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson (1854)
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Tennyson wrote his galloping tribute weeks after a British cavalry charge at Balaclava, in the Crimean War, rode into Russian guns because of a misunderstood order. It honors the courage of the 600 while admitting that “Some one had blunder’d,” a tension that every Remembrance Day still carries.
Read The Charge of the Light Brigade, with summary and analysis ›
9. O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman (1865)
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, assassinated days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, sets victory and grief side by side. The ship has come safely home, but its captain lies dead on the deck, and the crowds cheering on shore cannot know the cost.
Read O Captain! My Captain!, with summary and analysis ›
Poems of Mourning and Memory
These three poems do not mention war at all, which is why they suit so many services. They speak to anyone who has lost someone young, or who wants to be remembered.
10. Remember by Christina Rossetti (1862)
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
Rossetti’s sonnet begins as a plea to be remembered and ends by releasing the listener from grief: better to forget and smile than to remember and be sad. Read on November 11, it lets the dead speak with unexpected tenderness.
Read Remember, with summary and analysis ›
11. To an Athlete Dying Young by A. E. Housman (1896)
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, full of young men who die before their time, was widely read by soldiers in the First World War. This poem, about a champion runner carried to his grave, finds a bitter comfort in dying young: his glory will never fade.
Read To an Athlete Dying Young, with summary and analysis ›
12. Crossing the Bar by Alfred Tennyson (1889)
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
Tennyson pictures death as a ship putting out to sea at evening, calmly and without sorrow. Its peace makes it a fitting final reading after the anger and grief of the war poets, and a favorite at funerals for more than a century.
Read Crossing the Bar, with summary and analysis ›
Frequently Asked Questions
These are the questions readers most often ask about Remembrance Day poems.
What Is the Remembrance Day Poem?
In Canada, it is “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae, which is also the best-known war poem in the United States. In Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, ceremonies usually include the fourth stanza of Laurence Binyon’s “For the Fallen,” known as the Ode of Remembrance, which begins “They shall grow not old.”
Who Wrote “In Flanders Fields”?
John McCrae, a Canadian army doctor serving with the artillery, wrote it in May 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres. It was published in the British magazine Punch that December, and McCrae died of pneumonia in France in January 1918.
Why Are Poppies Linked to Remembrance Day?
Because of “In Flanders Fields.” Red poppies bloomed on the battlefields of Belgium and France, and after reading McCrae’s poem in November 1918, the American teacher Moina Michael began wearing one in memory of the dead; by 1921, veterans’ groups in Canada and Britain had adopted the poppy.
What Is the Most Famous War Poem?
“In Flanders Fields” is the most widely known, especially in North America. Among critics, Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is usually considered the greatest poem of the First World War.
What Is a Good Poem to Read Aloud on Remembrance Day?
“In Flanders Fields” is the most natural choice: it is short, it rhymes, and most audiences know it. For a quieter moment before a silence, try Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” or Sara Teasdale’s “There Will Come Soft Rains.”