Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/24

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��Grace Blackburn

The sky of France ! Sky of the Garden Land !

It is death now, I think. And oh, how good

Death is. . . death and the roses of the sky.

On me has come the spirit of a kiss

To fill for me the gap of this gaunt year :

I was her gift to France. . . she bade me go,

And when she bade me go she sealed her gift

With kisses. I have kept them for this hour.

Ah ! You must tell her that I died for France,

But that I kissed my mother with my soul ;

Kissed back her son. Roses ! Eternity !

CHRIST IN FLANDERS

LOUDS ! And the shadows of clouds on a level land scape !

Clouds that wrap the world in mysteries of green,

Irradiated vapours. . . the sun re-living the kisses of the sea ;

Responding to his comrade with secret embraces.

White roads with trees flung over,

And deep dyked pools by the sides of the way.

Lap after lap of stubbled field and stagnant pasture.

A desolated church with shattered roof and ruined arches.

Only one glad thing in the whole wide wilderness,

A peach tree in blossom. . . pink on pink kissing the trellis.

One sound, too, and one only. ., the sound of wings and a gluttonous cawing ;

Sound of wide-pinioned birds beating the air in circles.

I walk in a place of graves, unmarked, unnumbered ; The soil is rough and I stumble ... it heaves, it

palpitates, Up and down gently as though the breath of a thousand

sleepers

Were come back again in a vast low sighing, Breath I can see like a haze skimmed over.

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