Cross Roads by Margaret E. Sangster (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📖

-
And silver drops, like needles, slim and fine,
Drip from the branches of each gaunt-limbed tree.

Ah, Paris, can the very wistful sky
Look down into the center of your heart,
That has been bruised by war, and torn apart -
The once glad heart that has been taught to sigh?
The sun is like your smile that flutters by
Like some lost dream, before the tear-drops start.


VI. THE LATIN QUARTER - AFTER

They were the brave ones, the gallant ones, the
laughing ones,
Who were the very first to go - to heed their coun-
try's call;
They were the joyous ones, the carefree ones, the
chaffing ones,
Who were the first to meet the foe, who were the
first to fall.

Artists and poets, they; the talented and youthful
ones -
All the world before their feet, their feet that loved
to stray;
We have heard about their lives; stories crude, and
truthful ones
Of the carefree lives they lived, in the yesterday.

Ah, the Latin Quarter now; boarded up, the most
of it,
Studios are bare, this year, and little models sigh,
For the ones who died for France, died and are the
boast of it,
Died as they had always lived, with their heads
held high!

But a spark of it remains, in forgotten places,
For I saw a blinded boy strumming a guitar,
Playing with his face a-smile, with the arts and
graces
Of a troubadour of old. He had wandered far.

Through the flaming hell of war - wandered far and
home again,
To the corner that he loved when his eyes could
see;
And he played a jolly tune, he who may not roam
again,
Played it on an old guitar - played it smilingly.

And I saw another sit at a tiny table,
In a dingy eating house; he had laughed and
drawn
Sketches on the ragged cloth, boasting he was able
Still to draw as well as most - with two fingers
gone. . . .


VII. NOTRE DAME

Through colored glass, on burnished walls,
Soft as a psalm, the sunlight falls;
And, in the corners, cool and dim,
Its glow is like a vesper hymn.
And, arch by arch, the ceilings high
Rise like a hand stretched toward the sky
To touch God's hand. On every side
Is misty silence; and the wide
Untroubled spaces seem to tell
That Peace is come - and all is well!

A slender woman kneels in prayer;
The sunlight slants across her hair;
A pallid child in rusty black
Stands in the doorway, looking back. . . .
A poilu gropes (his eyes are wide)
Along the altar rail. The tide
Of war has cast him brokenly
Upon the shore of life. I see
A girl in costly furs, who cries
Against her muff; I see her rise
And hurry out. Two tourists pause
Beside the grated chancel doors,
To wonder and to speculate;
To stoop and read a carven date.

In uniform the nations come;
Their voices are a steady hum
Until they feel some subtle thrill
That makes them falter, holds them still -
Bronzed boys, who shrugged and laughed at death,
They stand today with indrawn breath,
Half mystified.
The colors steal
Into my heart, and I can feel
The rapture that the artists knew
Who, centuries before me, drew
Their very souls into the glass
Of every window. . . . . Hours pass
Like beads of amber that are strung
Upon a rainbow, frail and young.

Through mellow glass, on hallowed walls,
The twilight, like faint music, falls;
And in each corner, cool and dim,
The music is a splendid hymn.
And, arch on arch, the ceilings high
Seem like a hand stretched toward the sky
To touch a Hand that clasped a Cross -
FOR FRANCE, NEW-RISEN FROM THE LOSS,
AND PAIN AND FEAR OF BATTLE-HELL,
KNOWS PEACE, AT LEAST, AND ALL IS WELL!


VIII. SUNDAY MORNING

The streets are silent, and the church bells ring
Across the city like the silver chime
Of some forgotten memory. They bring
The phantom of another, sweeter time,
When war was all undreamed. They seem to say,
"Come back, come back, across the years of strife
"To One who reaches out a Hand today,
"A Hand that brings your dead again to life!"

A little white-haired woman hurries past,
A tiny prayer-book in one wrinkled hand;
Her eyes are calm, as one who knows at last
What only age may really understand;
That, as a rainbow creeps across the rain,
The God of Paris smiles above its pain!


SONGS FROM FRANCE

SCARS

Summer sweeps, like sad laughter, over France,
Touching the fields with flower-tinted mirth;
Bringing its wistful gladness to an earth
That has been stabbed with sorrow's bitter lance;
Bringing again the hint of old romance,
Bringing again the magic of re-birth;
Paying again the price that youth was worth -
OVER DIM WAYSIDE MOUNDS THE GRASSES DANCE!

Where there were shell holes summer sends, un-
heeding,
Blossoms to deck the broken country side;
Where, in another season, heroes, bleeding,
Fell for the cause of righteousness, and died,
Green creeper twines its vivid arms, half-pleading,
But there are scars that summer cannot hide!


FROM PARIS TO CHATEAU THIERRY

The road winds out its weary way,
Where fields are torn with sorrow;
It is a road of yesterday,
That dreams no fair tomorrow.

It is silent, saddened road,
A lonely road to follow;
For in its dust red rivers flowed,
And now, from every hollow,
The crows rise up in sullen flight
The crows that, blackly flying
Against the skyline, speak of night,
And bitterness, and dying.

It is a road that creeps around
Farmhouses that lie broken;
That pauses at each shallow mound,
At every blood-stained token.
A helmet by the way one sees;
A pistol, bent and rusty;
And hung between two shattered trees,
A coat mildewed and musty.
It is a sad, forgotten road,
But oh, it tells the story
Of youth that bore another's load
Without a thought of glory!
For every tattered homestead cries
Of vengeance that descended;
And memory that never dies,
From hearts that stay unmended!

The road winds out its weary way,
A lonely way to follow;
And crows rise black against the day
From every tree and hollow.


A RUINED CHURCH

They could not take the living God away,
Although they left His altar blank and bare;
Their ruthless hands could never rend and tear
More than the walls, they could not hope to sway
The utter faith that is the nation's heart;
They could not bring a real destruction where
Hymn music had been softly wont to play!
They smothered beauty, and tore hope apart;
But in the house of One who is supreme,
The marks they left will now be sanctified;
The broken walls, when war is but a dream,
Will be a monument to those who died;
And every shell-torn scar will stand for One
Whose hands were scarred, the Christ men crucified!

I think, perhaps, the very morning sun,
Will slant more gently through the broken tower -
And, in good season, that some tender flower
Will bloom beside the ruined threshold, where
Folk paused before they entered in to prayer. . . .


CHILD FACES

Child faces saddened, older than they should be,
And wiser than a lived-out span of years;
One wonders what those self same faces would be,
If they had never looked on pain - if tears
Had never been their portion; if the morrow,
Had never held the pallid ghost of care -
Child faces, graven deep with worlds of sorrow,
Until the light of childhood is not there!

Child faces, once agleam with carefree laughter,
Wide eyes, where smiles like baby rainbows grew;
They are the heritage of ever after,
They are the dreams that never will come true.
They are the words of fate that have been spoken,
And when the tumult of the war is gone,
They will remind a world that hearts were broken,
For, in their souls, France goes to meet her dawn!


AFTER HEARING MUSIC COMING FROM A
DEVASTATED FARMHOUSE

Just a little wisp of song played softly in the twilight,
Such a happy little song - and oh, the dusk is gray!
Such a joyous little song, and oh, the night is
coming -
Coming with the bitter chill that marks the death
of day.

Almost like a dance it is, it holds no hint of sorrow,
Almost like a waltz it is, to set the pulse a-thrill;
Not a hint of tears in it - and oh, the night is
coming -
Coming like a purple shroud across the purple hill!
Sad the little farmhouse is, the doors swing on their
hinges,
All the windows look like wounds, pitiful and bare,
And a shell has torn a gash in the broken roof of it,
But the music lilts along like a happy prayer.

Do pale ghostly fingers play on a ghostly violin?
(War has swept the countryside of the songs it
knew!)
Merry is the little tune - not a wistful questioning -
Merry with a rosy thrill of a dream come true.

Just a little wisp of song played softly in the twilight,
Such a happy little song - and oh, the dusk