The Night Cometh

Cometh the night. The wind falls low,

The trees swing slowly to and fro:

Around the church the headstones grey

Cluster, like children strayed away

But found again, and folded so.

No chiding look doth she bestow:

If she is glad, they cannot know;

If ill or well they spend their day,

Cometh the night.

Singing or sad, intent they go;

They do not see the shadows grow;

"There yet is time," they lightly say,

"Before our work aside we lay";

Their task is but half-done, and lo!

Cometh the night.

John McCrae

John McCrae born in Guelph, Ontario, Canadian poet, soldier, and physician John McCrae earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Toronto, where he received the Gold Medal. McCrae’s well-known poem “In Flanders Fields” memorializes the April 1915 battle in Belgium’s Ypres salient. For 17 days, McCrae tended those injured in the battle. January 28, 1918, at the age of 45. McCrae was buried with full military honors in Wimereux Cemetery near Boulogne, France. His family home in Guelph is preserved as a museum, and the main street in Wimereux is now named Rue McCrae.

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