| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | Before My Fire in a French Village | | By Morris Bishop |
| | From “With the A. E. F.”
WORDS and faces and jests and dreams all come to me again | |
| When I give my memory leave to play; but what I see most plain | |
| Is the little towns that loll in the sun and shiver and crouch in the rain. | |
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| The towns of my youth come crowding and tumbling, they will not wait for my thought: | |
| Varna, Slaterville, Danby, Ransome, Mesnil Butte, La Motte— | 5 |
| The towns where I went searching and troubled, not knowing what I sought. | |
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| The towns that I saw with a young man’s eyes: Grafton, Half-moon Bay, | |
| Canutillo, Whitewater, Bolton, Bolinas, Monterey. | |
| The sun was bright upon those towns the day I went away. | |
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| Now I have found a kind of peace, and long hours to beguile | 10 |
| With thinking of the roads I’ve trod for many a dusty mile, | |
| And the little wayside towns where I have rested for a while. | | | | |
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