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!