Page:The Book of the Homeless (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916).djvu/51

 Ils n'attendaient plus rien de la tendresse humaine

Et cherchaient à chasser d'un effort douloureux

L'Ange noir qui se couche à plat ventre sur eux

Et qui les considère avant qu'il les emmène.

went wailing to the dust.

She reverenced not the face of Death like these

To whom it came as no enfeebling peace

But a command relentless and august.

These grieved not at the beauty of the morn,

Nor that the sun was on the ripening flower;

Smiling they faced the sacrificial hour,

Blithe nightingales against the fatal thorn.

They grieved not that their feet no more should rove

The Athenian porticoes in twilight leisure,

Where Pallas, drunk with summer's gold and azure,

Brooded above the fountains like a dove.

They grieved not for the theatre's high-banked tiers,

Where restlessly the noisy crowd leans over,

With laughter and with jostling, to discover

The blue and green of chaffing charioteers.