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I stood, one azure dusk, in old Auxerre Before the grey Cathedral's towering height, And in the Eastern darkness, very fair I saw a little star that twinkled bright; How small it looked beside the mighty pile, Whose stone was rosy with the Western glow— A little star—I pondered for a while, And then the solemn truth began to know. That tiny star was some enormous sphere, The great cathedral was an atomy— So often when grey trouble looms so near That God shines in our minds but distantly,— If we but thought, our grief would seem so small That we would see that God's great love was all. France, 1917. |
Islington
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Here slow decay with creeping finger peels The yellow plaster from the grimy walls, Like leprous lichen, day by day which falls, And, day by day, more rotting stone reveals! Here are old mournful squares through which there steals No cheerful music, or the heedless calls Of laughing children; and the smoke, which crawls Across the sky, the heavy silence seals! Lean, blackened trees stretch up their withered boughs Behind the rusty railings, prison-bound, In vain they seek the summer sunlight's gold In which their long-dead fathers used to drowse: For pallid terraces lie far around, In gloomy sadness ever growing old. Ochey-les-Bains, 1917. |
The Country Beautiful
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I love the little daisies on the lawn Which contemplate with wide and placid eyes The blue and white enamel of the skies— The larks which sing their mattin-song at dawn, High o'er the earth, and see the new Day born, All stained with amethyst and amber dyes. I love the shadowy woodland's hidden prize Of fragrant violets, which the dewy morn Doth open gently underneath the trees To cast elusive perfume on each hour— The waving clover, full of drowsy bees, That take their murmurous way from flower to flower. Who could but think—deep in some sun-flecked glade— How God must love these things that He has made? Eastchurch, 1916. |