August, 1918 / Maurice Baring

August, 1918

(In a French Village.)

I hear the tinkling of the cattle bell,
    In the broad stillness of the afternoon;
    High in the cloudless haze the harvest moon
Is pallid as the phantom of a shell.
A girl is drawing water from a well,
    I hear the clatter of her wooden shoon;
    Two mothers to their sleeping babies croon,
And the hot village feels the drowsy spell.

Sleep, child, the Angel of Death his wings has spread;
    His engines scour the land, the sea, the sky;
    And all the weapons of Hell’s armoury
Are ready for the blood that is their bread;
    And many a thousand men to-night must die,
So many that they will not count the Dead.

 ~~
Maurice Baring (1874-1945)
from Poems, 1914-1919, 1920

Maurice Baring biography 

Léon Germain Pelouse (1838-1891), French riverside village at dusk, 1888.

Wikimedia Commons.