(_After Debussy_)
It has been a long day,
A long, long day;
And now in floods of twilight,
In long green waves of sunset softly flowing,
Evening.
It is evening over the great towns,
It is evening in our hearts.
And though the last frail tendrils
And flowers of incense
Have long ago uncurled themselves around
The cynical Cathedral,
I hear the thin white voices of children,
Little girls and little boys,
Calling the name of Jesus
And His most Sacred Heart,
Singing about a kind of parish heaven,
A little walled city, all golden and lilac,
Like the one seen by Francois Villon's mother
In an old, bituminous, smoke-bitten painting
Of the Middle Ages.
And in this faith she wished to live and die.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: Untitled poems whose titles are omitted in the body
of the text as originally published have had their conventional "first
line" titles (as seen in the table of contents) added to the body of this
transcription. They are enclosed in square brackets as an indication to
the reader.]