II.
["TO-DAY FOR ME."]
She sitteth still who used to dance,
She weepeth sore and more and more--
Let us sit with thee weeping sore,
O fair France!
She trembleth as the days advance
Who used to be so light of heart:--
We in thy trembling bear a part,
Sister France!
Her eyes shine tearful as they glance:
"Who shall give back my slaughtered sons?
"Bind up," she saith, "my wounded ones."--
Alas, France!
She struggles in a deathly trance,
As in a dream her pulses stir,
She hears the nations calling her,
"France, France, France!"
Thou people of the lifted lance,
Forbear her tears, forbear her blood:
Roll back, roll back, thy whelming flood,
Back from France.
Eye not her loveliness askance,
Forge not for her a galling chain;
Leave her at peace to bloom again,
Vine-clad France.
A time there is for change and chance,
A time for passing of the cup:
And One abides can yet bind up
Broken France.
A time there is for change and chance:
Who next shall drink the trembling cup,
Wring out its dregs and suck them up
After France?
[ON THE WING.]
SONNET.
Once in a dream (for once I dreamed of you)
We stood together in an open field;
Above our heads two swift-winged pigeons wheeled,
Sporting at ease and courting full in view.
When loftier still a broadening darkness flew,
Down-swooping, and a ravenous hawk revealed;
Too weak to fight, too fond to fly, they yield;
So farewell life and love and pleasures new.
Then, as their plumes fell fluttering to the ground,
Their snow-white plumage flecked with crimson drops,
I wept, and thought I turned towards you to weep:
But you were gone; while rustling hedgerow tops
Bent in a wind which bore to me a sound
Of far-off piteous bleat of lambs and sheep.
[CONSIDER.]
Consider
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:--
We are as they;
Like them we fade away,
As doth a leaf.
Consider
The sparrows of the air of small account:
Our God doth view
Whether they fall or mount,--
He guards us too.
Consider
The lilies that do neither spin nor toil,
Yet are most fair:--
What profits all this care
And all this coil?
Consider
The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks;
God gives them food:--
Much more our Father seeks
To do us good.