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Convalescence
by Victoria Mary Sackville-WestWhen I am in the Orient once again,
And turn into the gay and squalid street,
One side in the shadow, one in vivid heat,
The thought of England, fresh beneath the rain,
Will rise unbidden as a gently pain.
The lonely hours of illness, as they beat
Crawling through days with slow laborious feet,
And I lay gazing through the leaded pane,
Idle, and listened to the swallows' cry
After the flitting insect swiftly caught,
Those all-too-leisured hours as they went by,
Stamped as their heritage upon my thought
The memory of a square of summer sky
Jagged by the gables of a Gothic court.