Page:Armistice Day.djvu/147

Rh XVII

I stand before my window in the dawn, and the East is like an altar covered with a rich cloth;

In the deep aisles of the City are passionate marchers trampling out a Song,

And the towers are all in silver!

A great clangor is making tidal rhythms in the street,

Beating against the housewalls with a tossed surf of bells—

And I hear a voice in the tumult crying: "They have signed the armistice! The task is done..."

A toy balloon, gay colored, rises suddenly into the air, goes floating off upon a brilliant voyage, is pricked by a sunbeam, and vanishes...

Earth, are you such a bubble? Will you pass thus briefly into dissolution, stabbed by some lightning out of the enkindled void?

Were it not better, then, to dance than to dream—?

To die in peace rather than to live in travail—

Nay! For we tremble on the verge of immortality; and who shall therefore haste to spend his light?