Page:Armistice Day.djvu/189

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
 
WHEN POPPIES BLOOM AGAIN
167

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them!"

We felt ourselves envying those glorious dead "that shall never grow old," we who shall soon crumble and be forgotten.

We shall have new vistas after this hour. New chambers of our illimitable soul have been opened to Life; new monuments have been set up to keep clean and unsullied; new saints to worship, new ghosts to terrify us with awe and new phantoms to beautify our despair!


Largo

What spell is this that has come over London?

The two parlor maids busily polishing the many brasses on the door of the great mansion across the way in Palace Court pause. They seem to be waiting for something, almost anxiously. A church bell over Queens Roadway begins to strike the hour of eleven. It stops. There is the wail of the police siren that used to warn of the coming air raids.

The parlor maids rise with one accord and stand with folded hands and solemnly face the south, a little westward, like pious Mahometans slightly mistaken in their direction. The chauffeur in the driveway has stopped the engine of