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Pour votre hêtre «Suprême»
APPENDIX II
FOR YOUR «SUPREME» BEECH-TREE
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MOST noble Beech-tree, summer long, Held a bond-slave to such splendour, Here is your punishment prepared By a cold deceptive heaven.
Returned a hundredfold the crows, The winter whips and flays you bare; A wind whose breath blows over tombs Makes fall the fires of your torch!
Your brow, which hid the infinite, Is no more than a point of rest, On which the almost weightless nest For the lost eye a refuge makes!
All winter, the inactive gaze, Betrayed by the flawed window pane, Has sought in branches for the eggs Vainly forming a futile dream!
But - O Sadness of the season, Which wastes you as it wastes itself, You can know not of my reason Nor my hope in the Beech Supreme!
So much Grace and so much Beauty! May it be that all is dying, France, where the least of nests remains Balanced upon a home so proud?
A thousand birds will sing in one Memory of frightful wreckage, When green again out of Verdun Saved, our illustrious language! To M. A. G.
