Classic Poem

Unrest is laid upon me like a blight.
When I recall her wrong, her false embrace,
A sudden fury shakes me in the night
And then—the quiet beauty of her face.
Mood follows mood; my world is overcast
With too much brooding on a woman's frown;
Enough of lonely sorrow—and at last
I have gone to the town.

Faces, everywhere faces; surge on surge
The human billows thunder through the street;
What ocean trembling upon what a verge
What roaring seas, what tides that storm and beat.
Faces and towers, cars and women whirl
Everywhere, endless—till my senses seem
Lost amid odors, lights and sounds that swirl
As in a dizzy dream.

A dream that I have dreamed—and now made plain
That nightmare flash beneath the mild May stars!
Here are the straining faces, here the pain,
Here are the shipwrecks and the evil wars.
Here do I move among unanswered cries,
Here in the town of lives outlived and vain,
The dream, the storm, the fear, the strange-lit skies,
Sweep over me again.

And I had come for pleasure, for relief,
To gaudy crowds and over-brilliant lights—
Better the gray field and the quiet grief
Than this loud mockery of city nights.
The veins of town are poisoned with decay,
Its heart is throbbing with a futile stir …
What must the city do to those that stay—
What has it done to her?