It was drowned in peace and quiet, as the river reeds were drowned In the water clear as crystal, flowing by with scarce a sound; And the air was like a posy with the sweet haymaking smells, And the Roses and Sweet-Williams and Canterbury Bells. Far away as some strange planet seemed the old world's dust and din, And the trout in sun-warmed shallows hardly seemed to stir a fin, And there's never a clock to tell you how the hurrying world goes on In the little ivied steeple down in drowsy Bullington. Small and sleepy there it nestled, seeming far from hastening Time, As a teeny-tiny village in some quaint old nursery rhyme, And a teeny-tiny river by a teeny-tiny weir Sang a teeny-tiny ditty that I stayed a while to hear:-- "Oh the stream runs to the river and the river to the sea; But the reedy banks of Bullington are good enough for me; Oh the road runs to the highway and the highway o'er the down, But it's just as good in Bullington as mighty London town." Then high above an aeroplane in humming flight went by, With the droning of its engines filling all the cloudless sky; And like the booming of a knell across that perfect day There came the guns' dull thunder from the ranges far away. And, while I lay and listened, oh the river's sleepy tune Seemed to change its rippling music, like the cuckoo's stave in June, And the cannon's distant thunder and the engines' warlike drone Seemed to mingle with its burthen in a solemn undertone:-- "Oh the stream runs to the river, and the river to the sea, And there's war on land and water, and there's work for you and me; And on many a field of glory there are gallant lives laid down As well for sleepy Bullington as mighty London Town." So I roused me from my daydream, for I knew the song spoke true, That it isn't time for dreaming while there's duty still to do; And I turned into the highroad where it meets the flinty lane, And the world of wars and sorrows was about me once again. C.F.S. * * * * * REMEMBRANCE. "Stop, Francesca," I cried. "Don't talk; don't budge; don't blink. Give me time. I've all but--" "What _are_ you up to?" she said. "There," I said, "you've done it. I had it on the tip of my tongue, and now it has gone back for ever into the limbo of forgotten things, and all because you couldn't keep silent for the least little fraction of a second." "My poor dear," she said, "I _am_ sorry. But why didn't you tell me you were trying to remember something?" "That," I said, "would have been just as fatal to it. These things are only remembered in an atmosphere of perfect silence. The mental effort must have room to develop." "Don't tell me," she said tragically, "that I have checked the development of a mental effort. That would be too awful."