Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Before My Fire in a French Village

Morris Bishop

WORDS and faces and jests and dreams all come to me again

When I give my memory leave to play; but what I see most plain

Is the little towns that loll in the sun and shiver and crouch in the rain.

The towns of my youth come crowding and tumbling, they will not wait for my thought:

Varna, Slaterville, Danby, Ransome, Mesnil Butte, La Motte—

The towns where I went searching and troubled, not knowing what I sought.

The towns that I saw with a young man’s eyes: Grafton, Half-moon Bay,

Canutillo, Whitewater, Bolton, Bolinas, Monterey.

The sun was bright upon those towns the day I went away.

Now I have found a kind of peace, and long hours to beguile

With thinking of the roads I’ve trod for many a dusty mile,

And the little wayside towns where I have rested for a while.