The Blood-Swept Land of Poppies at the Tower of London

I finally got to see the Poppy  Installation at the Tower of London.  The installation far exceeded my expectations.  It was simply stunning, dramatic, and so, so moving -- the pictures don’t do it justice.  The installation will be completed on Nov. 11, Remembrance Day, when exactly 888,246 poppies will fill the moat -- one for each British and Commonwealth fatality of the First World War. The installation’s mammoth scale echoes and honors the war’s enormous toll -- a fitting remembrance on this 100-year commemoration of the Great War. 

The installation is the creation of Paul Cummins, a ceramicist artist and renowned theater stage designer Tom Piper.  They were inspired by a line in a will of an unidentified local man who died during the war. Describing the battlefields, the soldier wrote, “The blood-swept lands and seas of red, where angels fear to tread.” That first clause is now the title of the installation.

The Tower of London’s moat is the perfect spot to safely handle this slow-growing and delicate art project that is on such a massive scale. Its fortifications make it so that the public can see the poppies but they can't touch them. In addition, in 1914, the moat was also a training ground for military volunteers.

The poppies themselves are modeled after the flouncy poppy of Flanders Fields, where Col. John McCrae wrote his famous poem.  The ceramic poppies are available to buy for £25 each and the net proceeds will be shared equally amongst a group of carefully selected veterans charities.

 For more information:
 http://poppies.hrp.org.uk/ 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/11021743/Row-on-row-the-poppies-flow-at-the-Tower-of-London.html

My extraordinary cousin Diane Tueller Pritchett.   

The poem that was the inspiration for the installation:

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red

The blood swept lands and seas of red,
Where angels dare to tread.
As God cried a tear of pain as the angels fell,
Again and again.
As the tears of mine fell to the ground
To sleep with the flowers of red
As any be dead
My children see and work through fields of my
Own with corn and wheat,
Blessed by love so far from pain of my resting
Fields so far from my love.
It be time to put my hand up and end this pain
Of living hell. to see the people around me
Fall someone angel as the mist falls around
And the rain so thick with black thunder I hear
Over the clouds, to sleep forever and kiss
The flower of my people gone before time
To sleep and cry no more
I put my hand up and see the land of red,
This is my time to go over,
I may not come back
So sleep, kiss the boys for me