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A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919/Rheims Cathedral, 1914

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A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919
edited by George Herbert Clarke
Rheims Cathedral, 1914 by Grace Hazard Conkling
To My Daughter Betty, the Gift of God
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4554379A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919 — Rheims Cathedral, 1914Grace Hazard Conkling
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RHEIMS CATHEDRAL—1914

A WINGÈD death has smitten dumb thy bells,
And poured them molten from thy tragic towers:
Now are the windows dust that were thy flowers,
Patterned like frost, petalled like asphodels.
Gone are the angels and the archangels,
The saints, the little lamb above thy door,
The shepherd Christ! They are not, any more,
Save in the soul where exiled beauty dwells.


But who has heard within thy vaulted gloom
That old divine insistence of the sea,
When music flows along the sculptured stone
In tides of prayer, for him thy windows bloom
Like faithful sunset, warm immortally!
Thy bells live on, and Heaven is in their tone!


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