Take a moment to remember on this remembrance day.

In 1897, to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, Rudyard Kipling composed ‘The White Man’s Burden’. He put that poem aside, to use it almost two years later after the Spanish-American War, and replaced it instead with “Recessional“, which contains the refrain ‘Lest We Forget‘. It took until after World War 1 for the phrase to come into common usage on war memorials. It is so profound and sets the stage for later development of the commemoration of remembrance day.

God of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle line—
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!