Today is:

18 May 2012 (Gregorian)	5 May 2012 (Julian)	26 Iyar 5772 (Hebrew)	28th day 4th month 4710 (Chinese)
27 Jumada-al-Thani 1433 (Islamic)	28 Vaisakha 1934 (Saka)	18 Pruetsaphakhom 2555 (Thai)	2 'Azamat 169 (Baha'i)
29 Ordibehesht 1391 (Persian)	10 Genbot 2004 (Ethiopian)	4 Edavam 1187 (Malayalam)	10 Pashons 1728 (Coptic)
5 Vaikasi 107/26 Nandhana (Tamil)		The Moon is Waning

YESTERDAY:
Thursday, 17 May

TODAY:
Friday, 18 May

TOMORROW:
Saturday, 19 May

Ascension Day (Christian exc Orthodox)
Brown vs. Board of Education Topeka (US)
Father's Day (Germany)
Liberation Day (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
National Day (Norway)

Atatürk and Youth Day (Turkey)

For The Fallen

by Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon was born in Lancaster in 1869. At the outbreak of the First World War he was already an accomplished and noted poet. On 21 September, 1914, The Times published Binyon's poem, The Fallen (now called For the Fallen), which was later to adorn war memorials throughout Britain. At the time, Binyon was working at the British Museum, but in 1916 he went to the Western Front as a Red Cross orderly.

Binyon's career flourished long after the War, and he was appointed Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard in 1933. He died in 1943.

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For The Fallen

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