| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | Le Père Segret | | By Morris Bishop |
| | From “With the A. E. F.”
HE was a wise old man, the color of earth; | |
| From long upturning the earth his back was bent. | |
| He told me how the wine was bad in the spring, | |
| How the spring turned it moody and turbulent. | |
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| He tapped his earthy finger on the glass; | 5 |
| “The spring,” he said, “the spring runs into the soil, | |
| And warms the vine, clipped to the very blood, | |
| To bring forth buds with agony and toil. | |
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| “Not easily, as the profuse wild-vines do, | |
| Only a few great buds on a quaking vine; | 10 |
| And in the caves the old wines suffer too, | |
| And sour and turbulent is the spring-time wine.” | |
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| O horny old man, intimate with the earth, | |
| Will you not tell me yet another thing? | |
| What is the vine to which my hot blood yearns, | 15 |
| Bitter and turbulent, suffering with the spring? | | | | |
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