Classic Poem

The city night holds no such ghastly hour
As that of city dawn, when in the trees
The sparrows quarrel, and the pallid light
Is ushered in by waves of fetid breeze.

The ghosts that filled a burning, sleepless night
Draw closer in this livid birth of day,
To fix their dreadful faces on my mind
Before the August sun melts them away.

With brain exhausted and with body worn,
And soul too dulled by pain to frame a prayer,
I vaguely long for some fresh, dewy land,
Yet, ah, my ghosts would follow even there!

Beneath my window sleep the long gray streets,
Still in the heated heaven shines one star.
The ashen light grows whiter in its strength,
And, though still haunted, O, to be afar,

Where morning mists are brooding on some lake,
Or on a cool and silvered stretch of lawn!
—An outcast in the street below lifts up her face,
The incarnation of this city dawn.