They say that if you looked across the meadows when the day was late,
you could see her standing on the hill above the old Estate;
gazing with unseeing eyes; all lost, in times long gone before;
The daughter of the Local Squire; the tragic Lady Eleanor.

Her story is a tragedy, of young love slaughtered, out of hand;
of Class intransigence, which, in Edwardian times, still stalked the land.
Her heinous crime? She fell in love...
the blacksmith's son; she was sixteen.
Her father forbade any meeting; the Family name, she would demean.

This tragic couple met no more than once... or twice, or so they say;
the merest handful of sweet kisses... nothing else, most certainly.
For, she was watched; and when the time for shoeing horses came around...
they locked her in her room; so, of the boy, she had no sight, nor sound.

The story might well end here... just a first, young love, that could not be;
but there is more. Dark clouds were gathering over Europe, threateningly.
Spurred, by this simple act of bigoted, parental arrogance...
the boy, heartbroken... volunteered; and marched away to fight in France.

And, in the first month of the War, at some Entrenchment... some Redoubt;
with death, he kept his rendezvous... and felt the Reaper's hand reach out.
In bloody Flanders field he lies; just seventeen, his dreams... no more;
alone out there, forgotten... but, still loved by Lady Eleanor.

When, in time, her father died, and the Estate came to her hand,
the meadow, where she first had kissed the blacksmith's son, was pasture land.
She saw that it was yearly ploughed, left fallow... no crop there, she said;
and, in time the poppies grew... a carpet of the deepest red.

Just like the fields in Flanders where her first, and only love still slept;
Lady Eleanor had no more loves... her faithful vigil kept
to the memory of her one, and only love... the blacksmith's son;
the true love of her life, whom she remembered with each evening sun.

Standing, gazing... lost in time... alone except for memories.
Perhaps, of what there might have been... long lost, beneath that blood-red sea
of gently swaying poppies fading purple in the setting sun...
they say she stood there, motionless; until the Sun's last rays had gone.

But that was long ago, although the poppy field is there today;
and Lady Eleanor died long ago; but locally, they say
if lovers meet in Flanders Acre, the name the field is known by, now;
they will remain together... always, if their whispered words are true.

And Flanders Acre holds no echo of the sadness of the past.
Perhaps, the soul of Eleanor met with her long-lost love at last.
Perhaps... together, on the hill, they watch the poppies sway and blow;
and see the lovers, hand in hand...
Yes... I would like to think it so.