Classic Poem

I saw a pale young clerk coming home from the country,
His tired wife beside him, his child on his knee;
In his hands a bunch of crushed lilacs and wilting dogwood—
But in his heart a joy unknown to me.

The Subway clamored and clattered; the lurching people,
Weary, after long tramps through a scented lane,
Seemed like phantoms before me and all around me,
Their faces like ghosts in gardens after light rain.

But O, they were real! They were only too human!
Their eyes held the eager fire of dreams and of youth.
And I, in my loneliness, I to them was a phantom;
They had been out in still places; they had tasted the Truth.

And now they had memories for a week of days unending;
Now they had glamour enough to carry them through.
And only I was alone in that heaving Subway—
I, an idle dreamer, with nothing at all to do.