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Yet, like some chapter of an old romance,

My heart holds one memorial morning dear,

When the gray hazes whirled, as in a dance,

Up from the rippled Channel’s wide expanse,

And sunlit shores stept, on a sudden, near.

On that chief day of that prophetic year

Some pledge I could but dimly understand,

Some subtle spell, lay on the calm and clear

Blue harbor of this mute majestic land,

And hope shone smiling in the eyes of France!

And France it was that crushed my callow creed,

That held me like a mother to her breast;

That staunched the wounds my ignorance made bleed,

And, in the hour of that, my direst need,

Showed where my star still hung against the West.

France was the judge that put my faith to test,

Little by little lent it sturdier strength,

And schooled the rover in the rules of rest;

And now, dear heart, that you are mine at length,

I see ’t was she that taught me love indeed.