Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/86

 86

RANCE is planting her gardens,

France is preparing her spring;

Seeds in their long rows slumbering,

Bulbs in their ranks outnumbering,

For the brown beds' bordering;

France is planting her gardens,

France is preparing her spring,

France—of the ermined lilies,

France—of the Fleur-de-Lys;

And royal still her will is,

Say the stately Tuileries.

Her crippled and maimed and broken

Walk smiling, in her sun;

These are they who have spoken

Her word by the lips of Verdun;

Their little, gay children go leaping—

Laugh loud from the merry-go-round;

France has sown, for their reaping,

The flowers of France that are sleeping

Near by, in the warm brown ground.

France has planted her Garden,

France has prepared her a Spring,

All mankind for its warden,

Love for its singing bird;

Never the frost shall harden

Earth that has in its keeping

Seed sown there at her word,

Never the birds take wing;

Where the flower of France is sleeping

That earth shall have her spring! Grace Ellery Channing