Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/43

F. O. Call

Professor of Modern Languages, and Dean of Residence, at Bishop s College, Lennoxville, Quebec. Author of In a Belgian Garden and Other Poems etc. Born at West Brome, Quebec. Educated at Stanstead College, and at Bishop s College (B.A. and M.A.), Lennoxville. Took postgraduate work at McGill, Marburg and Paris, and travelled considerably in Europe* A new and enlarged edition of his poems is now being published in Toronto.

ONCE in a Belgian garden,

(Ah, many months ago!)

I saw like pale Madonnas

The tall white lilies blow.

Great poplars swayed and trembled

Afar against the sky,

And green with flags and rushes

The river wandered by.

Amid the waving wheatfields

Glowed poppies blazing red,

And showering strange wild music

A lark rose overhead.

The lark has ceased his singing,

The wheat is trodden low,

And in the blood-stained garden

No more the lilies blow.

And where green poplars trembled

Stand shattered trunks instead,

And lines of small white crosses

Keep guard above the dead.

For here brave lads and noble,

From lands beyond the deep,

Beneath the small white crosses

Have laid them down to sleep.

They laid them down with gladness

Upon the alien plain,

That this same Belgian garden

Might bud and bloom again.