Laurence Binyon

Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (August 10, 1869 – March 10, 1943) was an English poet. He was a Quaker and a pacifist who worked during the First World War as a medical orderly with the Red Cross on the Western Front. He is mainly known for his poem "For the Fallen," which is quoted on many war memorials.

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.

Quotes

• When a man sets out to paint a monumental painting, or to write an epic, men think of Barry and Southey, and vote all such efforts dull and pompous. Certainly it is safer to paint still life, or write little lyrics exquisitely.
  But Watts knew that subject counts for a great deal in art. The choice of a subject obviously matters immensely, because no one works well on a subject that does not interest him; and a great subject, though it does not make a feeble treatment of it great is necessary for calling out a man's utmost powers. Resistance in one's material is a fine spur to effort; and many artists have never realised a tenth of their own latent powers till brought to grapple with a subject which perhaps, at the time, utterly defeated them. Now Watts had a natural bent towards imaginative subjects on the heroic plane. Watts was very English ...
  • "Watts and National Art". The Independent Review Volume V. February—April 1905: 201–209. (quote from p. 206)

• 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" (1914), fourth verse
  • 'Condemn' is sometimes quoted as 'Contemn'. Both make sense in the context, but it was 'condemn' which was included in the first printing of the poem on page 9 of The Times of 21 September 1914. Binyon did not change it to 'contemn' when shown the proof of a later printing.

• We are living in a time of trouble and bewilderment, in a time when none of us can foresee or foretell the future. But surely it is in times like these, when so much that we cherish is threatened or in jeopardy, that we are impelled all the more to strengthen our inner resources, to turn to the things that have no news value because they will be the same to-morrow that they were to-day and yesterday — the things that last, the things that the wisest, the most farseeing of our race and kind have been inspired to utter in forms that can inspire ourselves in turn.
  • Lecture on opening a new library at Sutton High School (24 September 1938) during the Munich crisis, as quoted in "Books As Source Of Inner Strength," The Times (26 September 1938), p. 19