Leaving the roof whereon they sat
As 'twas before, a peaceful flat
Expanse, as silent and serene
As though no life had ever been.
TOWN
Mostly in a dull rotation
We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep.
Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation—
Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.
Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches,
Like eyeless insects in a murky pond
That out and out this city stretches,
Away, away, and there is no beyond.
No larger earth, no loftier heaven,
No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe. And yet,
Even to us sometimes is given
Visions of things we other times forget.
Some day is done, its labour ended,
And as we sit and brood at windows high,
A steady wind from far descended,
Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky;
There are the empty waiting spaces,
We watch, we watch, unwinking, pale and dumb,
Till gliding up with noiseless paces,
Night covers all the wide arch: Night has come.
Not that sick false night of the city,
Lurid and low and yellow and obscene,
But mother Night, pure, full of pity,
The star-strewn Night, blue, potent and serene.
O, as we gaze the clamour ceases,
The turbid world around grows dim and small,
The soft-shed influence releases
Our shrouded spirits from their dusty pall.