Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/259

 Rh A PETITION

HE halls that were loud with the merry tread of young and careless feet

Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday,

And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street

Or rises to shake the ivied walls and frighten the doves away.

The dust is on book and on empty desk, and the tennis-racquet and balls

Lie still in their lonely locker and wait for a game that is never played,

And over the study and lecture-room and the river and meadow falls

A stern peace, a strange peace, a peace that War has made.