I HEARD them talking and praising the grey French country, Dotted with red roofs high and steep, With just one grey stone church-tower keeping sentry Over the quiet dead asleep; Grey skies and greyer dunes, as grey as duty, Grey sands where grey gulls flew; And I said in my passionate heart, they know not beauty, Beloved, who know not you. I heard them praise the gold of the stormy sunset And the pale moon's path on the sea; I thought of your clouds with their wild magnificent onset, Your eagles screaming free. I thought of your mild, kind mountains, angel-bosomed, Quiet in dusk and dew. What flower of beauty that ever in Paradise blossomed, Love, was denied to you? I thought of the pale green dawns, and gold days' closes. Dear, I shall not forget Nights when your skies were full of the flying roses, Millions and millions yet. All your still lakes and your rivers broad and gracious, Dear mountain glens I knew; When the trump of judgment sounds and the world's in ashes I shall remember you. Remember! foretaste of Heaven you are, O Mother! By bog-lands, brown and bare, Where every little pool is the blue sky's brother, Your wild larks spring in the air. Land of my heart! smiling I heard their praises, Smiling and sighing too. I would give this grey French land for a handful of daisies Plucked from the breast of you. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A GIRL'S THOUGHTS by ISAAC ROSENBERG OZYMANDIAS REVISITED by MORRIS GILBERT BISHOP AMORETTI: 37 by EDMUND SPENSER TO SPAIN - A LAST WORD by EDITH MATILDA THOMAS MELANCHOLY by PHILIP EDWARD THOMAS THE LOVE SONNETS OF PROTEUS: 67. THE THREE AGES OF WOMAN: 2 by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT VALEDICTORY; THE SCHOLAR TO THE ASHES OF HIS LIBRARY by CHARLES WILLIAM BRODRIBB |