All day the guns belched fire and death
And filled the hours with gloom;
The fateful music smote the sky
In tremulous bars of doom;
But as the evening stars came forth
A truce to death and strife,
There rose from hearts of patriot love
A tender song of life.
A song of home and fireside
Swelled on the evening air,
And men forgot their battle line,
Its carnage and dark care;
The soldier dropp'd his rifle
And joined the choral song,
As high above the tide of war
It swept and pulsed along.
That night while sleeping where the stars
Look down upon the Meuse,
Where Teuton valor coped with Frank,
Where rained most deadly dews,
A soldier youth, in khaki clad,
Rock'd where the maples grow,
Smiled in his dream and saw again
The blue St. Lawrence flow.
For Miss Julia O'Sullivan.