A Little Town in Senegal Will Thompson
in Everybody’s Magazine
Permission to reproduce in this book
I HEAR the throbbing music down the lanes of Afric rain:
The Afric spring is breaking, down in Senegal again.
O little town in Senegal, amid the clustered gums,
Where are your sturdy village lads, who one time danced to drums?
At Soissons, by a fountain wall, they sang their melodies;
And some now lie in Flemish fields, beside the northern seas;
And some tonight are camped and still, along the Marne and Aisne;
And some are dreaming of the palms that bend in Afric rain.
The music of the barracks half awakes them from their dream;
They smile and sink back sleepily along the Flemish stream.
They dream the baobab’s white buds have opened over-night;
They dream they see the solemn cranes that bask in morning light:
I hear the great drums beating in the square across the plain.
Where are the tillers of the soil, the gallant, loyal train?
O little town in Senegal, amid the white-bud trees,
At Soissons, in Picardy, went north the last of these!