The last two lines, my bolding:
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields
Though.
Though implies an expected cause and effect. Even though poppies are growing here, we still cannot (or will not) sleep. As if the narrator expects that the reader is thinking "WTF? Why can't you sleep? There are poppies growing there!"
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it's a drug reference.
And yet they have schoolchildren recite this?
3 comments:
Maybe... the poppies growing are a sign that life has moved on. That it's all over but in fact - they still cannot sleep.
I think you are taking those lines out of context...they relate to the previous line "If ye break faith with us who die."
The flowers grow and life moves on, but they won't be able to sleep (i.e. they can't rest in peace) if you break faith with them and don't respect the cause they gave their lives for.
They've passed the torch: you can continue their battle, or preserve the peace they helped make possible. It can be read as glorifying battle (it was once used as a recruitment pitch) or anti-war, depending on your perspective...that's the main reason it is so classic.
Oh, that's right! I'm so used to poppies being static symbols, the symbols people pin on their jackets, that I completely forgot they're plants and flowers as well and can act like any other flower symbol - especially since the poppy-specific symbolism we're used to didn't exist yet at the time that this poem was written, because this poem actually invented it!
That would also explain the longstanding mystery of why MacCrae used the word "grow" here when he used "blow" at the beginning of the poem! I was always parsing "grow" as a general synonym for "are there" that applies to plants, but it must be that he's referring to actual growth
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