Thomas MacDonagh

In Paris

So here is my desert and here am I
In the midst of it alone,
Silent and free, as a hawk in the sky,
Unnoticed and unknown.

I speak to no one from sun to sun,
And do my single will,
Though round me loud voiced millions run
And life is never still.

There goes the bell of the Sorbonne
Just as in Villon's day--
He heard it here go sounding on,
And stopped his work to pray--

Just in this place, in time of snow,
Alone, at a table bent--
Four hundred and fifty years ago
He wrote that Testament.