Springtime scatters the shuddering Autumn dreariness.
My little girl! I have a little girl in my home!...
You bring back my smile to me in a heavy time....
I gaze up at the sky and am silent. And far and near the busy, noisy
swarm of workers is silent. Every one looks up, seeking some point in
the far sky. Officers and men for a single heart-throb listen as to a
distant song from the lips of children and from a mother's
mouth--stand there and smile around me, in blissful pensiveness, as if
there were no longer an enemy. Every one seems to feel the sun, the
sun of olden happiness.
And yet, it had merely chanced that on the German Rhine, in an old
castle lost amid trees, a dear little German girl was born.
(Written Sept. 17, 1914, in the field.)