Winding down the street in wearied gaiety, the barrel-organ dribbled out its song

Merged with the thud of feet forever dallying indifferent and indefinite along.

The houses stood like rows of cripples, some paralysed, some hunch-backed and some bent with age,

They seemed at war, their chimneys threatening, their brows hung heavy in a sombre rage.

Crab-like the children crawled, while always hammering above their heads the scolding shrewish tongue;

They grew as bloodless flowers unflourishing, waxen and pale from out the dust and dung.

Above I saw the strip of sunset fluttering, even as washed-out rags upon the line,

I listened to the sparrows twittering, and the hours ticking in a slow decline.

Then beaded on the hem of evening, the coloured lights were threaded here and there,

Till proud with sweets and plumes and oranges, the shops grew brilliant in the tinsel glare.

Grey was the death-bed of the twilight, shuddering the faint hands of the day stretched to the night,

Fending it off, or feebly wavering over the pallid glints of stolen light.

And grey the faces that were gathering among the fallen ashes of the day,

And red the faces, yellow, flickering, under the lamps upon the long highway.

And some were gashed with smiles, and quaint grimaces of hate and pain and hunger and despair,

And some wore coloured hats and meek frivolities, limp ribbons, and false pansies in their hair,

But all were cold, and all seemed passionless; there shone no zest or splendour in their lives,

Nor hope in anything but holidays, or watching funerals, or taking wives.

I dared not think, for truth rose horrible, slapping the face with coarse uncaring hand,

But like them cheated into merriment, I wilfully refused to understand;

Turned me away from wan-eyed poverty, trod pity underfoot, oh, danced on grief,

Bade the crowd sing and fill my desolation, bade them be glad and hide my disbelief.

Strange we so love the world—for presently, out of my window looking on the city,

I blessed the night, and the roofs slumbering all huddled, and I felt no shame nor pity

For all our dusty days of journeying amid the wreck and ruins of our dreams,

Meandering in a bleared forgetfulness, where lethe laps the wharf of sleeping streams.

I only breathed the air, intensified by the ascending breath of million lungs,

And heard the labouring metropolis, quickened by whispers of a million tongues;

And felt a king of splendid loneliness, and felt an atom of the peopled spaces,

And felt again my lordly egoism, one face distinct among the blur of faces.

Tranquility stirred by a sudden spasm,

Knives of rain that cut the silence,

Storms that rattle the bones of the forest,

Calm of the marble-terraced night

Charred with the spattering of rockets.

Drums will I hear and battles now,

And the long death howl of wolves by night,

Watching the moon on the forest tops,

Walking with delicate frightened steps

To the slaughter-house of a red sunrise.

I could explain

The complicated lore that drags the soul

From what shall profit him

To gild damnation with his choicest gold.

But you

Are poring over precious books and do not hear

Our plaintive, frivolous songs;

For we in stubborn vanity ascend

On ladders insecure,

Toward the tottering balconies

To serenade our painted paramours;

Caught by the lure of dangerous pale hands,

Oblivion's heavy lids on sleepless eyes

That cheat between unrest and false repose.

And we are haunted

By spectral Joy once murdered in a rage,

Now taking shape of Pleasure,

Disguised in many clothes and skilful masks.

I could disclose

The truth that hangs between our lies

And jostles sleep to semi-consciousness;

Truth, that stings like nettles

Our frail hands dare not pluck

From out our garden's terraced indolence.

We are not happy,

And you make us dumb with loving hands

Reproachful on our lips.

Nor can we sob our sorrows on your breast,

For we have bartered diamonds for glass,

Our tears for smiles,

Eternity for now.

I feel in me a manifold desire

From many lands and times and clamouring peoples,

And I the Queen

Of crowding vagabonds,

Ghosts of lost years in seeming fancy dress,

With pathos of torn laces

And broken swords;

Cut-throats and kings and poets

Who have loved me

In visions wild, not knowing

What I was.

In me no end

Even where the last content

Clasps on my head a crown

Of shining endurance—

I slip from all my robes

Into the rags of a tattered romance;

The stars crowd at the