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 Pigeons and fowls about a pointed haystack;

The red-tiled barns we sleep in;

The profile of the distant town

Misty against the leaden-silver sky;

Two ragged willows and a fallen elm

With an end of broken wall

Glimmering through evening mist—

All worthy Rembrandt's hand,

Rembrandt who loved homely things …

Then there's the rain pool where we wash,

Skimming the film-ice with our tingling hands;

The elm-fringed dykes and solemn placid fields

Flat as a slate and blacker.

There's the church—

The poorest ever built I think—

With all its painted plaster saints

Straight from the rue St. Sulpice,

Its dreadful painted windows,

And Renaissance "St. Jacques le Majeur"

Over the porch …

To-day the larks are up,

The willow boughs are red with sap,

The last ice melting on the dykes;

One side there stands a row of poplars,

Slender amazons, martial and tall,

And on the other

The sunlight makes the red-tiled roofs deep orange …