To dream,—sweet fancies which the young enjoy,
The last thrush whistles in a distant copse,
As, only by the glowing of a pipe,
A smothered laugh, a restless infant's cry,
Is the blue silence of the Heavens broken
To show the stars humanity still lives.
The Village
1915
THE shrieking of a thousand maddened furies
Riding the air, a violent thunder-clap,
Sharp vivid stabs of flame; then falling bricks
And silence: deep, deep silence of the dead.
No other creature but a scurrying rat
Is seen, even the sparrows that last year
In cheeky self-assurance chirped about
Have gone their way and left the desolate place.
In May the martins came again, to build
Their tiny homes on last year's site, but found
The sheltering eaves where they had taken refuge
Strewn on the ground.
Those scarred and tumbling walls
Once were the church, yet might have been an inn
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