Golden Stalks and Fallen Soldiers: Remembering Leslie Coulson

On This Day
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:

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July 19, 1889

On this day, dear readers, we commemorate the birth of a soul whose words would later echo across the blood-soaked fields of France.

Leslie Coulson, that poignant voice of the Great War, entered this world on a day much like today, though the earth had yet to know the horror that would claim him.

Imagine, if you will, a garden in full summer bloom, its beauty a stark contrast to the battlefield where Coulson would meet his fate.

How fitting that this poet, born amidst the peace of a July day, would leave us with verses that juxtapose the brutal and the beautiful.

The gold stalks hide
Bodies of men who died
Charging at dawn through the dew to be killed or to kill.
I thank the gods that the flowers are beautiful still.

These lines, penned by Coulson, speak to us gardeners with a particular poignancy, do they not?

We, who tend the earth and coax life from the soil, can perhaps best appreciate the bittersweet observation of nature's indifference to human suffering.

Coulson's life was cut tragically short at the Battle of Le Transloy, a name that now carries the weight of countless lost futures.

Yet, in his brief time, he gifted us with words that continue to bloom in our collective consciousness, as resilient as the most stubborn of perennials.

As we go about our day, let us pause in our gardens, amidst our own gold stalks and dew-kissed blooms.

Let us remember Leslie Coulson and all those whose lives were sown into foreign soil, their sacrifice fertilizing the fields of history.

And perhaps, as we tend to our plots, we might whisper a thanks to whatever gods may be listening, that despite the cruelties of this world, the flowers remain beautiful still.

Leslie Coulson
Leslie Coulson

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