Chapter XII: Before a Bulletin Board

(_After Beaumont-Hamél_)

God! How should letters change their color so:
A little _k_ or _m_ stab like a sword;
How dry, black ink should turn to red and flow,
And figures leap like hydras on the board?

A woman raised her voice, and she was told
That strange things happen at the will of God;
Thus, dawn from midnight; thus, from fire the gold;
Thus did a rose once blossom from a rod.

But stranger things to-day, than that the rod
Should flower, or the cross become a crown--
Stranger than gold from fire; else how should God
Bring on the night before the sun go down.