Remembrance
A Latin poem for Remembrance Sunday
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.
—For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon
I put these moving lines into Latin elegiacs; my friend David Butterfield supplied the last line (an undoubted improvement on my own version).
Non senium noscent, ut nos in luce relicti:
hos semper iuvenes tempora nulla terent.
et surgente die, et cum sole cadente recedit
lux, illorum omnis rite erit usque memor.
Literally translated:
“They shall not know old age, as we who are left in the light will: they will not be worn down, always young, by the years. Both at the dawn of day and when the setting sun withdraws its daylight, all will rightly remember them for ever."
Love this and have copied it out. Would still take issue with you for bottling the “years condemn” though. Surely the meaning is that they remain forever innocent, while we, through life, accrue fault perforce.
Very enjoyable and most challenging. Why a U.S. war dead cemetery? This is a contemporary Canadian view that other countries, notably the U.K., contributed more and longer in both World Wars. ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.