Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/248

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��Bernard Freeman Trotter

When the wind goes through the poplars and blows

them silver white,

The wonder of the universe is flashed before my sight: I see immortal visions : I know a god s delight.

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 savor of old forgotten things, Before reality had marred the child s imaginings: I can believe in fairies I see their shimmering wings.

I see 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.

PRIL snow agleam in the stubble,

Melting to brown on the new-ploughed fields, April sunshine, and swift cloud-shadows

Racing to spy what the season yields Over the hills and far away: Heigh! and ho! for an April day!

Hoofs on the highroad: Ride tr-r ot!

Spring s in the wind, and war s forgot, As we go riding through Picardy.

Up by a wood where a brown hawk hovers,

Down through a village with white-washed walls,

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