Page:Eight Harvard Poets.djvu/130

 A DULL SUNDAY

(After Debussy)

T has been a long day, A long, long day; And now in floods of twilight, In long green waves of sunset softly flowing, Evening. It is evening over the great towns, It is evening in our hearts.

And though the last frail tendrils And flowers of incense Have long ago uncurled themselves around The cynical Cathedral, I hear the thin white voices of children, Little girls and little boys, Calling the name of Jesus And His most Sacred Heart, Singing about a kind of parish heaven, A little walled city, all golden and lilac, Like the one seen by Francis Villon's mother In an old, bituminous, smoke-bitten painting Of the Middle Ages.

And in this faith she wished to live and die. 117