A distant bugle summoned them by day,
A far flame beckoned them across the night.
They rose—they flung accustomed things away,—
The habit of old days and new delight.
They heard—they saw—they turned them over-seas,—
Oh, Land of ours, rejoice in such as these!
This was no call that sounded at their door,
No wild torch flaming in their window space,—
yet the quick answer went from shore to shore,
The swift feet hastened to the trysting place,
Laughing, they turned to death from peace and ease,—
Oh, Land of ours, be proud of such as these!
High hearts—great hearts—whose valor strikes for us
Out of the awful Dissonance of war
This perfect note,—in you the chivalrous
YOUNG SEEKERS OF THE GRAIL RE-LIVE ONCE MORE,—
Acclaimed of men, or fallen where none sees,
Oh, Land of ours, be glad of such as these!
[signed]Theodosia Garrison
A Summer's Day
Once I wrote a story of a woman's day in Paris, a Perfect Day. It had to do with the buying of all the lovely trappings that are the entrappings of the animal which Mr. Shaw believes woman endlessly pursues. One of the animals was in the story, and there was food and moonlight, music and adventure.
I never sold that marvelous tale. For years it has peeked out at me from a certain pigeon hole in my desk with the anguish of a prisoner in the Black Hole of Calcutta, and with as little hope for its liberation into the glad air of a free press. Yet it is with me now in Paris. In that last distracted moment of packing, when all sense of what is needed has left one, it was thrust into a glove case like contraband cigarettes. There may have been some idea of remolding it with a few deceiving touches—make a soldier of the hero probably—but with the "love interest" firmly remaining. There was only one Perfect Day to a woman, I thought.
That was some weeks ago. I am now writing on the back of that romance for lack of paper, writing of another day, wondering as I work if the present day's adventures will have any quality that might hold the reader's eye. I dare not ask for the reader's heart when love does not stalk through the pages.
Paris is now an entrenched camp but one is not awakened by bugles, and the beat of drums is unheard as the troops march through the city. It was the regular "blump-blump" of military boots past my window which possibly aroused me into activity, although the companies crossing from station to cantonment no longer turn the head of the small boy as he rolls his hoop along the Champs Élysées. This troubles me, and I always go to the curb to watch them when I am in the street.
There was an instant's hesitation before I pulled up the refractory Venetian blind—the right rope so eager to rise, the left so indifferent to its improvement—an instant's dread. I was afraid "they" would be hopping about even this early in the morning, hopping, hopping—the jerking gait of the mutilated—the little broken waves of a sea of "horizon blue." But they must have been just getting their faces washed at the Salon, where once we went to see pictures and now find compositions more dire than the newest schools of painting.