Katharine Tynan Hinkson (1861–1931)

I HEARD them talking and praising the grey French country,

Dotted with red roofs high and steep,

With just one gray stone church-tower keeping sentry

Over the quiet dead asleep.

Grey skies and greyer dunes, as grey as duty,

Grey sands where grey gulls flew.

And I said in my passionate heart, they know not beauty,

Beloved, who know not you.

I heard them praise the gold of the stormy sunset

And the pale moon’s path on the sea;

I thought of your clouds with their wild magnificent onset,

Your eagles screaming free.

I thought of your mild kind mountains, angel-bosomed,

Quiet in dusk and dew.

What flower of beauty that ever in Paradise blossomed,

Love, was denied to you?

I thought of the pale green dawns, and gold day’s closes.

Dear, I shall not forget

Nights when your skies were full of the flying roses,

Millions and millions yet.

All your still lakes and your rivers broad and gracious,

Dear mountain glens I knew;

When the trump of judgment sounds and the world’s in ashes

I shall remember you.

Remember! foretaste of Heaven you are, O Mother!

By bog-lands brown and bare,

Where every little pool is the blue sky’s brother,

Your wild larks spring in the air.

Land of my heart! smiling I heard their praises,

Smiling and sighing too.

I would give this gray French land for a handful of daisies

Plucked from the breast of you.