Seen through the glass, dead, sleeps the petite place.
Where white-capped housewives lingered once to chat
On market days, or after early mass;
Now nothing moves there but the stealthy cat—
The only thing that even dares to stir;
It hugs short shadows near the walls at noon,
Lashing its tail to hear an airplane purr,
Circling about a peering, fat balloon.
The houses gleam too bright, their limelight glare,
Pure sunlight though it be, is filled with gloom;
They are too white, too garnished and too bare—
They are too much like walls about a tomb.
The windows stare beside each gaping door,
Where once in gingham apron and a shawl,
In days now passed away forevermore,
Some little mother sat and nursed her doll.
Sepulchral silence and a lonely dread
And desolation's calm have settled down,
Making brief peace there for the rigid dead—
Tonight the shells will burst upon the town!
WHITE LIGHT.
How like high mountain air this air in France;
The sun is so intense, so clear, so bright,
The fields unearthly green, the poplars glance,
Shivering their leafy lances in the light.
Those drilling troops flash back a steely gleam.
Others with distant din of clean delight,
Bathe where their bodies flash along the stream
And everywhere, the air, a lake of light!
White light, strange light of tense romantic days,
You are too rare, too cloudless and too clear,
Like a deep crystal where a seer might gaze
And see some vast disaster drawing near.
Petite Villiers,
July 4th, 1918.