| A BOMB has fallen over Notre Dame: | |
| Germans have burned another Belgian town: | |
| Russians quelled in the east: England in qualm: | |
| |
| I closed my eyes, and laid the paper down. | |
| |
| Gray ledge and moor-grass and pale bloom of light | 5 |
| By pale blue seas! | |
| What laughter of a child world-sprite, | |
| Sweet as the horns of lone October bees, | |
| Shrills the faint shore with mellow, odd delight? | |
| What elves are these | 10 |
| In smocks gray-blue as sea and ledge, | |
| Dancing upon the silvered edge | |
| Of darkness—each ecstatic one | |
| Making a happy orison, | |
| With shining limbs, to the low-sunken sun?— | 15 |
| See: now they cease | |
| Like nesting birds from flight: | |
| Demure and debonair | |
| They troop beside their hostess' chair | |
| To make their bedtime courtesies: | 20 |
| "Spokoinoi notchi!—Gute Nacht! | |
| Bon soir! Bon soir!—Good night!" | |
| |
| What far-gleaned lives are these | |
| Linked in one holy family of art?— | |
| Dreams: dreams once Christ and Plato dreamed: | 25 |
| How fair their happy shades depart! | |
| |
| Dear God! how simple it all seemed, | |
| Till once again | |
| Before my eyes the red type quivered: Slain: | |
| Ten thousand of the enemy.— | 30 |
| Then laughter! laughter from the ancient sea | |
| Sang in the gloaming: Athens! Galilee! | |
| And elfin voices called from the extinguished light:— | |
| "Spokoinoi notchi!—Gute Nacht! | |
| Bon soir! Bon soir!—Good night!" | 35 |
