How like high mountain air this air in France;
The sun is so intense, so clear, so bright,
The fields unearthly green, the poplars glance,
Shivering their leafy lances in the light.
Those drilling troops flash back a steely gleam.
Others with distant din of clean delight,
Bathe where their bodies flash along the stream
And everywhere, the air, a lake of light!
White light, strange light of tense romantic days,
You are too rare, too cloudless and too clear,
Like a deep crystal where a seer might gaze
And see some vast disaster drawing near.
Petite Villiers,
July 4th, 1918.