| |
| GREEN gardens in Laventie! | |
| Soldiers only know the street | |
| Where the mud is churned and splashed about | |
| By battle-wending feet; | |
| And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass— | 5 |
| Look for it when you pass. | |
| |
| Beyond the church whose pitted spire | |
| Seems balanced on a strand | |
| Of swaying stone and tottering brick, | |
| Two roofless ruins stand; | 10 |
| And here, among the wreckage, where the back-wall should have been, | |
| We found a garden green. | |
| |
| The grass was never trodden on, | |
| The little path of gravel | |
| Was overgrown with celandine; | 15 |
| No other folk did travel | |
| Along its weedy surface but the nimble-footed mouse, | |
| Running from house to house. | |
| |
| So all along the tender blades | |
| Of soft and vivid grass | 20 |
| We lay, nor heard the limber wheels | |
| That pass and ever pass | |
| In noisy continuity until their stony rattle | |
| Seems in itself a battle. | |
| |
| At length we rose up from this ease | 25 |
| Of tranquil happy mind, | |
| And searched the garden’s little length | |
| Some new pleasaunce to find; | |
| And there some yellow daffodils, and jasmine hanging high, | |
| Did rest the tired eye. | 30 |
| |
| The fairest and most fragrant | |
| Of the many sweets we found | |
| Was a little bush of Daphne flower | |
| Upon a mossy mound, | |
| And so thick were the blossoms set and so divine the scent, | 35 |
| That we were well content. | |
| |
| Hungry for Spring I bent my head, | |
| The perfume fanned my face, | |
| And all my soul was dancing | |
| In that lovely little place, | 40 |
| Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered towns | |
| Away … upon the Downs. | |
| |
| I saw green banks of daffodil, | |
| Slim poplars in the breeze, | |
| Great tan-brown hares in gusty March | 45 |
| A-courting on the leas. | |
| And meadows, with their glittering streams—and silver-scurrying dace— | |
| Home, what a perfect place! | |
| |
