whom they cannot conquer. All the little trees that grow near gardens
are gone, aspen, laburnum and lilac. It is like this for hundreds of
miles. Hundreds of ruined towns gaze at it with vacant windows and see
a land from which even Spring is banished. And not a ruined house in
all the hundred towns but mourns for some one, man, woman or child;
for the Germans make war equally on all in the land where Spring comes
no more.

Some day Spring will come back; some day she will shine all April in
Picardy again, for Nature is never driven utterly forth, but comes
back with her seasons to cover up even the vilest things.

She shall hide the raw earth of the shell holes till the violets come
again; she shall bring back even the orchards for Spring to walk in
once more; the woods will grow tall again above the southern anemones;
and the great abandoned guns of the Germans will rust by the rivers of
France. Forgotten like them, the memory of the War Lord will pass with
his evil deeds.

Two Songs

Over slopes of English hills looking south in the time of violets,
evening was falling.

Shadows at edges of woods moved, and then merged in the gloaming.

The bat, like a shadow himself, finding that spring was come, slipped
from the dark of the wood as far as a clump of beech trees and
fluttered back again on his wonderful quiet wings.