Broadway
I've seen Broadway! It seemed to me,
The livelong day,
That all the world was in New York,
And all New York must surely be,
With all its horses, beeves, and pork,
In this Broadway.
From all the wide earth, air, and seas,
Here seem to meet
The confused noises of creation,
Whose endless clamors never cease,
Clanging their Babel-like vibration
In this one street.
Like our great streams in freshet times,
Which rush and roar,
Tearing their banks in hurried flight,
The people, gathered from all climes,
Rush down Broadway from morn till night,
Then back they pour.
Each morning down, each evening back,
These streams of men,
Ebbing and flowing like the tide,
With all-hued waves from white to black,
Rush, swell, and surge, and then subside,
To surge again.
All nations seem to 've thrown their things
In here, pell-mell;
Silks, laces, linens, furs, fruits, shawls,
All sorts of goods that commerce brings,
And all the locomotive hauls,
To trade and sell.
And all the gold from all the mines,
And things most rare
And rich, are in the windows found;
And gods, or heathenish divines,
Without a stitch of clothing round
Their bodies bare.
And all the pictures, prints, and paints,
And flaunting flirts;
The highest stores and highest rents,
The worst of sinners, best of saints,
And the whole world's most common scents,
And all the squirts.
All the lost tribes of wandering Jews,
With the same noses
And golden ear-rings, (some are brass,)
The same old rites, old clothes, and shoes,
And spirit of the same old ass
They had with Moses.
And Gentile wanderers of the town,
Gay belles and beaux,
Whose chief employment seems to be
To keep on walking up and down,
Like men with post-bills on, to see
And show their clothes.
All languages and tribes and tongues
Here meet and blend:
Dutch, Irish, all sorts, pray and swear;
Italians grind and sing their songs;
In short, Broadway 's a World's Great Fair
From end to end.
Russ-payement! Oh, could horses curse!
That fatal course
Would hear some oaths would make it hiss, —
Than even man's perhaps oaths worse, —
For each Russ-stone a gravestone is
Of some dead horse!
Poor horses! jades in all the stages
Of living death:
Some panting, sweating; others pawing;
Some falling while the driver rages;
And some with all their strength just drawing
Their last thin breath.
But many a horse aristocratic,
(And jackass too,)
Lives in a house three stories high;
While I, a human democratic,
Not one good story left have I, —
But less will do.
I marked a pensive, downcast maiden, —
So sad her eyes
One reads her story as she goes;
Her weary life with work o'erladen,
She toils, and toils, and paler grows,
And slowly dies.
By her there flaunted on another;
Though silks are high
She trailed enough upon the ground
To make a gown for her grandmother,
And filth, with which the streets abound,
She mopped up dry.
But then the man who walks her after
Finds all his path
So cleansed and swept from filth and dirt,
He tries his best to keep from laughter
To see it dangling from her skirt,
Or chokes his wrath.
I, gawky-like, trod on one's trail,
And tore it asunder;
She turned as if to eat me raw,
And looked a look that made me quail, —
The handsomest face I ever saw
Turned black with thunder!
A woman harnessed twixt two dogs
Before a cart!
I saw them drag a load of stuff
She 'd gathered up to reed her hogs,
Which passing smote my nose enough
To make it smart.
And crowding hers dashed by a team
And equipage
That gave my country eyes a feast;
While boys cried, " Shoddy!!! " with a scream
That made one person jump, at least,
And made FOUR rage.
Now Shoddy is a term applied
To men just shod
With gold, of which, I understand,
They robbed dead soldiers, — those who died
While battling for their native land,
On blood-stained sod.
I like these shoddy-chaps, because
They show the charms
And true nobility of cash,
And our aristocratic laws,
Which give the man who makes a dash
A coat of arms.
I met a man I need not name, —
Last fall our guest, —
And knew him well, and he knew me,
And yet he passed me, just the same
As though eyes were not made to see
A friend ill-dressed.
They say about a thing like this
I need not bother,
For people here in their new clothes
Don't know the friends they even kiss
In some by-street where no one goes,
But cut each other.
And men who live five stories high
Look down and chafe
Four-story men, with scorn and pride;
And hence they build as near the sky
As they can very well abide,
Or deem quite safe.
And many a man whose rule of life
Is Get and gather!
Climbs on his gold above himself,
And gets a golden sort of wife,
Then don't know anything but pelf,
Not even his father!
The greatest wonder in Broadway
A man can meet,
Is, how through all the mixed-up mass
Of horse-kind, stage-kind, coach, and dray,
Driving like Jehu, one can pass
Across the street.
The Apostle Paul stands petrified
While gazing down,
From his old Church by Fulton Street,
On the mad scene, which vexed and tried
Him sore, till he, from head to feet,
Was changed to stone!
It seems like whirlwinds in the woods, —
Oaths, cries, appeals,
The vehicles of all the world
All jammed and crammed with men and goods,
And in mad huddle wildly hurled, —
Wheels locked in wheels.
Men who cross here must venture on 't
With rash intent,
And make their wills ere they leave home;
Such men would swim the Hellespont
Though choked with debris floating from
A continent.
O'er this mad surf some cool M. P.
Just lifts his hand,
And lo! the stormy waves divide,
And tribes of people cross the sea,
With this strange Moses for a guide,
Safe on dry land!
Yet these M. P.'s are shunned by many, —
Much more 's the pity!
Because of their acquaintances:
They know the thieves, pickpockets, any
And all bad folk, with wicked phiz,
Throughout the city.
They even know the corporation, —
That long-lived thief, —
Who 's levied black-mail for a living
E'er since the British occupation, —
The scoundrel's common way of " giving
Broadway relief! "
The river Styx flows through Broadway,
Where Barnum's Show
Long stood, a gilded gate of death:
There on the dark walk thousands stay,
Trembling, yet asking with quick breath
To pass below.
Them Police Charons pilot o'er
To join their friends.
But still the tide keeps rushing on,
And crowds keep surging as before,
To swell the multitude who 've gone
Where Broadway ends.
The livelong day,
That all the world was in New York,
And all New York must surely be,
With all its horses, beeves, and pork,
In this Broadway.
From all the wide earth, air, and seas,
Here seem to meet
The confused noises of creation,
Whose endless clamors never cease,
Clanging their Babel-like vibration
In this one street.
Like our great streams in freshet times,
Which rush and roar,
Tearing their banks in hurried flight,
The people, gathered from all climes,
Rush down Broadway from morn till night,
Then back they pour.
Each morning down, each evening back,
These streams of men,
Ebbing and flowing like the tide,
With all-hued waves from white to black,
Rush, swell, and surge, and then subside,
To surge again.
All nations seem to 've thrown their things
In here, pell-mell;
Silks, laces, linens, furs, fruits, shawls,
All sorts of goods that commerce brings,
And all the locomotive hauls,
To trade and sell.
And all the gold from all the mines,
And things most rare
And rich, are in the windows found;
And gods, or heathenish divines,
Without a stitch of clothing round
Their bodies bare.
And all the pictures, prints, and paints,
And flaunting flirts;
The highest stores and highest rents,
The worst of sinners, best of saints,
And the whole world's most common scents,
And all the squirts.
All the lost tribes of wandering Jews,
With the same noses
And golden ear-rings, (some are brass,)
The same old rites, old clothes, and shoes,
And spirit of the same old ass
They had with Moses.
And Gentile wanderers of the town,
Gay belles and beaux,
Whose chief employment seems to be
To keep on walking up and down,
Like men with post-bills on, to see
And show their clothes.
All languages and tribes and tongues
Here meet and blend:
Dutch, Irish, all sorts, pray and swear;
Italians grind and sing their songs;
In short, Broadway 's a World's Great Fair
From end to end.
Russ-payement! Oh, could horses curse!
That fatal course
Would hear some oaths would make it hiss, —
Than even man's perhaps oaths worse, —
For each Russ-stone a gravestone is
Of some dead horse!
Poor horses! jades in all the stages
Of living death:
Some panting, sweating; others pawing;
Some falling while the driver rages;
And some with all their strength just drawing
Their last thin breath.
But many a horse aristocratic,
(And jackass too,)
Lives in a house three stories high;
While I, a human democratic,
Not one good story left have I, —
But less will do.
I marked a pensive, downcast maiden, —
So sad her eyes
One reads her story as she goes;
Her weary life with work o'erladen,
She toils, and toils, and paler grows,
And slowly dies.
By her there flaunted on another;
Though silks are high
She trailed enough upon the ground
To make a gown for her grandmother,
And filth, with which the streets abound,
She mopped up dry.
But then the man who walks her after
Finds all his path
So cleansed and swept from filth and dirt,
He tries his best to keep from laughter
To see it dangling from her skirt,
Or chokes his wrath.
I, gawky-like, trod on one's trail,
And tore it asunder;
She turned as if to eat me raw,
And looked a look that made me quail, —
The handsomest face I ever saw
Turned black with thunder!
A woman harnessed twixt two dogs
Before a cart!
I saw them drag a load of stuff
She 'd gathered up to reed her hogs,
Which passing smote my nose enough
To make it smart.
And crowding hers dashed by a team
And equipage
That gave my country eyes a feast;
While boys cried, " Shoddy!!! " with a scream
That made one person jump, at least,
And made FOUR rage.
Now Shoddy is a term applied
To men just shod
With gold, of which, I understand,
They robbed dead soldiers, — those who died
While battling for their native land,
On blood-stained sod.
I like these shoddy-chaps, because
They show the charms
And true nobility of cash,
And our aristocratic laws,
Which give the man who makes a dash
A coat of arms.
I met a man I need not name, —
Last fall our guest, —
And knew him well, and he knew me,
And yet he passed me, just the same
As though eyes were not made to see
A friend ill-dressed.
They say about a thing like this
I need not bother,
For people here in their new clothes
Don't know the friends they even kiss
In some by-street where no one goes,
But cut each other.
And men who live five stories high
Look down and chafe
Four-story men, with scorn and pride;
And hence they build as near the sky
As they can very well abide,
Or deem quite safe.
And many a man whose rule of life
Is Get and gather!
Climbs on his gold above himself,
And gets a golden sort of wife,
Then don't know anything but pelf,
Not even his father!
The greatest wonder in Broadway
A man can meet,
Is, how through all the mixed-up mass
Of horse-kind, stage-kind, coach, and dray,
Driving like Jehu, one can pass
Across the street.
The Apostle Paul stands petrified
While gazing down,
From his old Church by Fulton Street,
On the mad scene, which vexed and tried
Him sore, till he, from head to feet,
Was changed to stone!
It seems like whirlwinds in the woods, —
Oaths, cries, appeals,
The vehicles of all the world
All jammed and crammed with men and goods,
And in mad huddle wildly hurled, —
Wheels locked in wheels.
Men who cross here must venture on 't
With rash intent,
And make their wills ere they leave home;
Such men would swim the Hellespont
Though choked with debris floating from
A continent.
O'er this mad surf some cool M. P.
Just lifts his hand,
And lo! the stormy waves divide,
And tribes of people cross the sea,
With this strange Moses for a guide,
Safe on dry land!
Yet these M. P.'s are shunned by many, —
Much more 's the pity!
Because of their acquaintances:
They know the thieves, pickpockets, any
And all bad folk, with wicked phiz,
Throughout the city.
They even know the corporation, —
That long-lived thief, —
Who 's levied black-mail for a living
E'er since the British occupation, —
The scoundrel's common way of " giving
Broadway relief! "
The river Styx flows through Broadway,
Where Barnum's Show
Long stood, a gilded gate of death:
There on the dark walk thousands stay,
Trembling, yet asking with quick breath
To pass below.
Them Police Charons pilot o'er
To join their friends.
But still the tide keeps rushing on,
And crowds keep surging as before,
To swell the multitude who 've gone
Where Broadway ends.
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