Shares

Do YOU know WHY we celebrate Memorial Day? Have you taught your kids why? If not, take a moment to do so. It is not just a day to barbecue and take a day off, it is a day to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom; their lives.

Memorial Day, the holiday that takes place annually on the last Monday in May, is a dedicated day for honoring U.S. military personnel who have died while serving in the United States armed forces. Over 1.3 Million Americans paid the ultimate sacrifice to afford us the freedoms we take for granted every day.

Here is a moving poem we’d love to share with you in honor of some of our fallen soldiers.

The Unknown Dead

By: Elizabeth Robbins Berry

Above their rest there is no sound of weeping,
Only the voice of song-birds thrills the air;
Unknown their graves, yet they are in God’s keeping,
There are none “missing” from His tender care.
He knows each hallowed mound, and at His pleasure
Marshalls the sentinels of earth and sky;
O’er their repose kind Nature heaps her treasure,
Farmed by soft winds which ’round them gently sigh.
Bravely they laid their all upon the altar,
Counting as naught the sacrifice and pain,
Theirs but to do and die without a falter—
Ours to enjoy the victory and the gain.
They are not lost; that only which was mortal
Lies ‘neath the turf o’erarched by Southern skies;
Deathless they wait beyond the heavenly portal,
In that fair land where valor never dies.
In the great heart of coming generations
Their fame shall live, their glory never cease;
Even when comes to all earth’s troubled nations
God’s perfect gift of universal peace.