"A GREAT CALM"
57
V
So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly
Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!"
One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,
"Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,
And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?"
VI
Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance
To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,
As they had raised it through the four years' dance
Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;
And murmured, "Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?"
VII
Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not,
The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.
