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Image via Canva (edited by Westwood Minute). The Manhattan skyline sits beneath a star-filled sky, echoing the imagery in Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen.
In remembrance of the victims and those who responded to help on September 11, 2001, below is an excerpt from the poem, For the Fallen, by Laurence Binyon. Published on September 21, 1914, by The Times of London, it predated the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States by 86 years, and was written as an elegy after the outbreak of World War I. Over time, passages from For the Fallen have continued to resonate and have been offered at remembrances long after the conclusion of the Great War.
Excerpts from For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon
They shall grow not 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.
. . .
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.
