Nought is there here the eye to strike--
Uncurved canals where barges ply;
A hundred hamlets all alike;
Flat fields that cut an arc of sky
With men and women o'er them bent
Who needs must labour lest they die.
Would any say that lives so spent
Might break, spurred on by love and pride,
Their bars of animal content?
Nay, here live men unvexed, untried--
I mused. Yet pacing Roosevelt street
In idle humour I espied
A village man and woman meet,
And pass with never word or sign--
So strange in neighbour-folk whose feet
Haunt the same fields in rain and shine
That, curious eyed, in either face,
In curve of lip, or graven line,
I sought for hints of pain or trace
Of harsh resolve, and so grew ware
That hers was as a hiding place
Where lurked the kinship of despair;
While his bore record deeply wrought
That life for him had but one care,
And that--to mesh re-iterant thought
In labour, till at last his soul
Should find the anodyne it sought.
Hence now with dreary face he stole
Through Roosevelt Street, nor stretched his hand
To beg from life its smallest dole.
And yet these two had loved and planned
To happiest end, but for the flood
That wrecks, upreared on rock or sand,
The house of hopes. Thus--cold of mood,
He, loving wholly, could but choose
To deem her heart as his subdued;
While she, as maidens oft-times use,
Denied sweet proofs of love, was fain
To gain them by the world-old ruse;
And failing, vexed to find that vain
Was all her pretty reticence,
She happed upon a worthless swain
On whom, reserved the gold, the pence
Of liberal smiles she flung away,
Till, snared by her own innocence,
She fell--Ah, God! how far that day
She fell--from hope and promise plumb,
To deeps where lips forget to pray.
But he, apart, with sorrow dumb,
Beheld, scarce conscious of the strife,
Himself in her by fate o'ercome;
And as she passed to her new life,
Righted by still more wrong, divined
Her hate for him who called her wife,
And on the hoarded knowledge pined
And starved, till he, as she, was dead,
And nought remained but to unwind
His coil of days. So with slow tread
He goes his way through Roosevelt Street
At night and morn, nor turns his head
When past him comes the sound of feet--
Of ghostly feet that long ago
In life had made his pulses beat.
For, mark you, both are dead, and so
Small wonder is it nought should pass
Betwixt them in the street, I trow.
Yet still they move with that huge mass
Of life unpurposeful that reaps
The corn in season, mows the grass,
And then by right of labour sleeps
With privilege of dreams that ape
Fulfilment, whereby each may creep
From pain through doors of dear escape;
Save such, unhappy, as would win
Some respite for themselves, and shape
Those passionate, deep appeals that din
The Powers, ere season due, to stay
The long slow tragedies of sin.