A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/To My Grandchildren (L'Année Terrible, Victor Hugo)
Children beloved, they shall tell you later of me,
How your grandsire dandled you well-pleased on his knee;
How he adored you, and how he strove on the earth
To do his best always; how, alas! from his birth,
Of joy he had little, and of grief he had much;
How many maligned him, though he cared not for such;
How at the time you were very young and he old
He never had harsh words and airs fretful or cold
For you or for any: and then how at the close
He left you for ever in the time of the rose;
How he died—how he was a kind man after all;
How in the famed winter when rained shell, shot, and ball,
He traversed Paris through, Paris girt by a horde,
Paris tragic, and full of the gleam of the sword,
To get you heaps of playthings, strange puppets and dolls
And bearded Jack-in—the-box, whose spring sudden appals,
And sometimes a flower pearled with the bright morning dews:
—And then pensive under the dark trees you will muse.