Green gardens in Laventie!
Soldiers only know the street
Where the mud is churned and splashed about
By battle-wending feet;
And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass,
Look for it when you pass.
Beyond the Church whose pitted spire
Seems balanced on a strand
Of swaying stone and tottering brick
Two roofless ruins stand,
And here behind the wreckage where the _back_ wall should have been
We found a garden green.
The grass was never trodden on,
The little path of gravel
Was overgrown with celandine,
No other folk did travel
Along its weedy surface, but the nimble-footed mouse
Running from house to house.
So all among the vivid blades
Of soft and tender grass
We lay, nor heard the limber wheels
That pass and ever pass,
In noisy continuity until their stony rattle
Seems in itself a battle.
At length we rose up from this ease
Of tranquil happy mind,
And searched the garden's little length
A fresh pleasaunce to find;
And there, some yellow daffodils and jasmine hanging high
Did rest the tired eye.
The fairest and most fragrant
Of the many sweets we found,
Was a little bush of Daphne flower
Upon a grassy mound,
And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the scent
That we were well content.
Hungry for Spring I bent my head,
The perfume fanned my face,
And all my soul was dancing,
In that lovely little place,
Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered towns
Away......upon the Downs.
I saw green banks of daffodil,
Slim poplars in the breeze,
Great tan-brown hares in gusty March
A-couching on the leas;
And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver scurrying dace,
Home--what a perfect place.
_Belgium, March,_ 1916.