Veterans Day Poems Quotes

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. ~ John McCrae

But this Veterans Day, I believe we should do more than sing the praises of the bravery and patriotism that our veterans have embodied in the past. We should take this opportunity to re-evaluate how we are treating our veterans in the present. ~ Nick Lampson

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 falling 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. ~ John McCrae

The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below ~ John McCrae

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. ~ Laurence Binyon

As a 22-year Army Veteran who served in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, and as a Civilian Advisor to the Afghan Army in Operation Enduring Freedom, I understand both the gravity of giving the order, and the challenge of carrying it out. ~ Allen West

President Bush paid homage Wednesday to World War II veterans of Normandy at the D-Day Memorial. Later that night, his twin daughters paid a special tribute to World War II veterans of the Pacific. They each downed two kamikazes. ~ Argus Hamilton

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees. ~ Li Bai

The willingness of America's veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude. ~ Jeff Miller

Tip and Lulu shared a smile… and what can we say? Best friends were made that day. Marafiki milele was what they would stay. Their laughter could be heard for miles around. It truly was a wonderful sound. ~ Lauren Isabelle Pierre

These martyrs of patriotism gave their lives for an idea. ~ Schuyler Colfax

At Concerned Veterans for America, we've made the case that the defense budget could be targeted for spending reform, but in a targeted fashion that genuinely changes unsustainable spending trajectories while preserving U.S. defense capacity. ~ Pete Hegseth

Find me here,
said love.
I will wait for you
below and above.

I will wait for you
in the dark, in the light.
I will wait for you
in the day, in the night.

I have waited millions of years
and haven't grown weary once.
All of eternity I will wait
though there's nowhere I haven't been once.

I have been in hearts and groins,
in the whole and the chasm.
I have been in birth and death,
in the fucking and the orgasm.

If you close your eyes, I am there,
in your nakedness, in your truth.
If you ask for me, I will come
in your age, in your youth.

Because I love you, lover.
And wish to be loved.
Find me here, said love.
I wish to be loved. ~ Kamand Kojouri

I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting. ~ Ronald Reagan

It was early on in 1965 when I wrote some of my first poems. I sent a poem to 'Harper's' magazine because they paid a dollar a line. I had an eighteen-line poem, and just as I was putting it into the envelope, I stopped and decided to make it a thirty-six-line poem. It seemed like the poem came back the next day: no letter, nothing. ~ August Wilson

Sublime wonders lie in store,
I am shown a regal residence;
a mighty kingdom, an empire
with more grandeur than before ... ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

Mountain Center"
Maureen McLane


The cords are strong
a loose weave strung
between white pines.

Now I will offer
a transcript of today's news
and you'll know it

as conceptual poetry
as this hammock
is a plagiarism

of all other hammocks
in all poems & the world.
My dream of originality

a copy
of an idea
no one had.

Like everyone
"I have wasted my life."

Magpie day
mockingbird night
cuckoo mind ~ Maureen McLane

I am not a hero but the brave men who died deserved this honor. ~ Ira Hayes

I conduct very few interviews with veterans. The contemporaneous, or near-contemporaneous, record for WWII is so spectacularly deep that latter-day recollections are largely unnecessary for a historian. Of course, in considering any account, I'm looking for additional sources that can confirm or enlarge that version of events. ~ Rick Atkinson

The Flag still floats unblotted with defeat! But ah the blood that keeps its ripples red, The starry lives that keep its field alight. ~ Rupert Hughes

I go where the sound of thunder is. ~ Alfred M. Gray

The 2.4 million bright, brave, incredibly fit and remarkably talented young Americans who have served in our armed forces since we were attacked on 9-11-01 are all volunteers. As General Petraeus put it during a conversation we had in Afghanistan, 'They all came or stayed, knowing they were going to war.' For more than a decade, these patriots and their loved ones have made extraordinary sacrifices for this country. They embody the classical definition of heroes: those who put themselves at risk for the benefit of others. ~ Oliver North

Spring is God's way of saying, 'One more time!' ~ Robert Orben

The day you reached your pockets,
giving me broken shells that I cherished
as the most precious jewels,
I hoped that you, perhaps,
will find missing pieces of your broken heart in me.
I was wrong because you are still looking for them in someone else. ~ Tatjana Ostojic

The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by. ~ Sebastian Junger

On this Veterans Day, let us remember the service of our veterans, and let us renew our national promise to fulfill our sacred obligations to our veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much so that we can live free. ~ Dan Lipinski

The greatest of poems is an inventory.
Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it
in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to
look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy
one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the
solitary island. ~ G.K. Chesterton

My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer (still less commentator, pseudo-prophet); it is basically to praise God out of an inner center of silence, gratitude, and 'awareness.' This can be realized in a life that apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or nonaccomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my hand to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting logs or writing poems, or best of all simple notes. ~ Thomas Merton

I was there. I saw your sons and your husbands, your brothers and your sweethearts. I saw how they worked, played, fought, and lived. I saw some of them die. I saw more courage, more good humor in the face of discomfort, more love in an era of hate and more devotion to duty than could exist under tyranny. ~ Bob Hope

You know someone is special to you when you're literally captivated by them in even the little moments. The slightest thing they say or do, is like watching the universe unfold. And nothing else matters in those moments.

Where you go about your day, & the most capricious of things send you into a whirlwind of thoughts connected to them. And a plethora of thoughts flood into your mind, for no apparent reason other than its them.

Or perhaps, you randomly see a picture of them in your news feed & you just pause & look, & the world melts away & all time seems to stop, & there's a radiance that illuminates your life. And you focus on the little details, & wish you could just capture every single detail vividly.

And you see their eyes, & though they're merely a moment in time, their eyes are so beautiful, that they transcend the medium & are as if they're there looking back. And all you can do it look into them. Knowing those eyes are what you could look into endlessly.
And you know that it's all you could ever want, if for just a single moment in time.

Or they share their thoughts, & you rack your brain around how they think. An you just want to understand & know more of their thoughts, simply because they're theirs.

They, to you, are a more elegant work of art than even the finest painting, songs or poems of the great artists. And you know that even the most renowned artist c ~ Trevor Driggers

THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATE

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds. ~ Wallace Stevens

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost. ~ Arthur Ashe

There's a pressure at all hours of the day only a poem can assuage. ~ Kristen Henderson

I write love poems when I'm not rapping. It comes naturally." He winked at me.
"If you start rapping, I promise you I'll throw myself off this platform. ~ Kristen Day

Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. ~ William Shakespeare

It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle. ~ Norman Schwarzkopf

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

True love requires action. We can speak of love all day long, we can write notes or poems that proclaim it, sing songs that praise it, and preach sermons that encourage it but until we manifest that love in action, our words are nothing but sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. ~ Robert Frost

Everything is boring, boredom is the other epidemic which is making Europe ripe for decline. Boredom is the end product of each and every civilization. It is the arteriosclerosis of the great thinking peoples. The moment always arrives where even God, whether he's called Zeus, Zebaoth or Zoroaster, has finished creating the universe and asks: "What's the point of it, actually?" He yawns and chucks it aside. Mankind does the same with civilization. Boredom is the condition of a people which no longer believes but all the same is doing just fine. Boredom is when every clock in the country is predestined to be correct. When the same naive flowers blossom again in the month of March. When every day the deaths of good family fathers are announced in the papers. When a war breaks out in the Balkans. When poems go on about the stars. Boredom is a symptom of aging. Boredom is the diagnosis that talent and virtue are slowly being spent. Boredom is the life-long determination to a form of being which has worn itself out. ~ Iwan Goll

I am super proud of being an American, but we fail our veterans every day. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I am in awe of Sam's decision to abandon capitals and punctuation but am not brave enough to do the same. I like to imagine the day he, as the Americans say, made the change he wished to see in the world. I like to think it came to him suddenly. Perhaps he was swimming - no, too active - or napping indoors on a hot day - no, too bourgeois - probably he was in Scotland during the midge season and he left the desk lamp on and the window open when he went out for a meaningful walk. It was dark and the midges were drawn to the lamplight and - thinking it was the moon - fried themselves against the bulb, falling in their tens and tens, cooked on the pages of Sam's poems. So when he returned some time later, with bites on his neck, he found his poems loaded with punctuation, asterisks, grammar lying dead on his manuscript and his instant reaction was disgust, a feeling that then infected his whole aesthetic. ~ Joe Dunthorne

The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they're protecting us. ~ Tom Clancy