The Valleys of the Blue Shrouds

O SHARDS of walls that once held precious life, Now scattered, like the bones the Prophet saw Lying in visioned valley of the slain Ere One cried: "Son of Man, can these bones live?"

O images of heroes, saints, and Christs, Pierced, broken, thrust in hurried sepulture In selfsame tombs with tinsel, dross, and dreg, And without time for either shrift or shroud!

O smold'ring embers of Love's hearthstone fires, Quenched by the fiercer fires of hellish hate, That have not where to kindle flames again To light succeeding generations on!

O ghost-grey ashes of cathedral towers That toward the sky once raised appealing hands To beg the God of all take residence And hold communion with the kneeling souls!

O silent tongues of bells that once did ring Matin and Angelus o'er peaceful fields, Now shapeless slag that will to-morrow serve To make new engines for still others' woe!

O dust that flowered in finial and foil And bright in many-petaled windows bloomed, Now unto dust returned at cannon's breath To lay thy faded glories on the crypt!

O wounded cities that have been beloved As Priam's city was by Hecuba,— Sad Hecuba, who ere in exile borne, Beheld her Hector's child Astyanax

Spitted on spear (as if a Belgian babe) And saw the walls in smoke and flame ascend To hover heav'nward with wide-brooding wings Above the "vanished thing" that once was Troy!

O shards of sanctuaries and of homes! O embers, ashes grey, and glinting dust! Ye who were tile or tower in Laon or Ypres, A village by the Somme, a church in Roye, A bit of glass in Reims, a convent bell In St. Dié, a lycée in Verdun, A wayside crucifix in Mézières, Again I hear a cry: "Can these bones live?"

Yes! As the bones, o'er which the Prophet cried And called the breath from Heav'n's four winds to breathe, Sprang straightway bone to bone, each to its place, To frame in flesh the features and the forms They still remembered and still loved to hold Once more on earth—so shall ye rise again!

Out of their quarries, cumulus, the clouds Will furnish back your flame in crystal stone; The cirrus dawns in Parsee tapestries With azure broiderings will clothe your walls; The nimbus noons will shower golden rain And sunset colours fill each Gothic arch;