Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/299

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I catch the secret rhythm that steals along the earth,

That swells the bud, and splits the burr, and gives the oak its girth,

That mocks the blight and canker with its eternal birth.

It wakes in me the savour of old forgotten things,

Before "reality" had marred the child's imaginings:

I can believe in fairies—I see their shimmering wings.

I see with the clear vision of that untainted prime,

Before the fool's bells jangled in and Elfland ceased to chime,

That sin and pain and sorrow are but a pantomime—

A dance of leaves in ether, of leaves threadbare and sere,

From whose decaying husks at last what glory shall appear

When the white winter angel leads in the happier year.

And so I sing the poplars; and when I come to die

I will not look for jasper walls, but cast about my eye

For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky. Bernard Freeman Trotter Oxford, September, 1916.

THE CATHEDRAL