What is this France of today, you ask?
It’s a madhouse of homesick men,
Chafing, each one, to renew his task
In the land of his dreams again.
France! It is khaki and France is blue
And France is a green-capped Hun—
Badge of the bondage he’s destined to
Till the days of his debt are done.
France is an emerald rolling plain,
Ribboned with winding ways,
Quivering white through the fields of grain
And lost in the purple haze.
France is a village of dung and ducks
Where the muck-brown urchins play,
Rumbling all day with the motor-trucks
As they roll down the old highway.
France is a hill with an ancient church—
Gray towers through the poplar trees,
Gargoyles a-grin from each crumbling perch
At the saints on their balconies.
France is a window of mellow light
Where the day’s last gold has died—
France is a woman with brow of white
At the feet of the Crucified.
France is a cap and an empty coat
And a space where the embers glow—
France is a grave by a shell-torn moat
Where the weeds and the poppies grow.
France is the ashes of yesterday
And France is tomorrow’s dawn—
France is a bough with a blossom spray
On the ruins of Montfaucon.
VERDUN, FRANCE,
April, 1919.