But how with them whose memory makes them sweet?

Oh if I called them, hailing name by name,

Would the same lips the same old shouts repeat?

Have the rough years, so big with death and ill,

Gone lightly by and left them smiling yet?

Wild black-eyed Jeanne whose tongue was never still,

Old wrinkled Picaud, Pierre and pale Lisette,

The homely hearts that never cared to range,

While life's wide fields were filled with rush and change.

And where is Jacques, and where is Verginie?

I cannot tell; the fields are all a blur.

The lowing cows whose shapes I scarcely see,

Oh do they wait and do they call for her?

And is she changed, or is her heart still clear

As wind or morning, light as river foam?

Or have life's changes borne her far from here,

And far from rest, and far from help and home?

[Pg 42]

Ah comrades, soft, and let us rest awhile,

For arms grow tired with paddling many a mile.

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