| |
| THE SPRING has grown to Summer; | |
| The sun is fierce and high; | |
| The city shrinks and withers | |
| Beneath a burning sky. | |
| Ailanthus trees are fragrant, | 5 |
| And thicker shadows cast, | |
| While berry-girls, with voices shrill, | |
| And watering-carts go past. | |
| |
| In offices like ovens | |
| We sit without our coats; | 10 |
| Our cuffs are moist and shapeless, | |
| No collars bind our throats. | |
| We carry huge umbrellas | |
| On Broad Street and on Wall, | |
| Oh, how thermometers go up! | 15 |
| And, oh, how stocks do fall! | |
| |
| The nights are full of music, | |
| Melodious Teuton troops | |
| Beguile us, calmly smoking, | |
| On balconies and stoops. | 20 |
| With eyes half-shut and dreamy, | |
| We watch the fire-flies’ spark, | |
| And image far-off faces, | |
| As day dies into dark. | |
| |
| The avenue is lonely, | 25 |
| The houses choked with dust; | |
| The shutters, barred and bolted, | |
| The bell-knobs all a-rust. | |
| No blossom-like spring dresses, | |
| No faces young and fair, | 30 |
| From “Dickels” to “The Brunswick,” | |
| No promenader there. | |
| |
| The girls we used to walk with | |
| Are far away, alas! | |
| The feet that kissed its pavement | 35 |
| Are deep in country grass. | |
| Along the scented hedge-rows, | |
| Among the green old trees, | |
| Are blooming city faces | |
| ’Neath rosy-lined pongees. | 40 |
| |
| They’re cottaging at Newport; | |
| They’re bathing at Cape May; | |
| In Saratoga’s ball-rooms | |
| They dance the hours away. | |
| Their voices through the quiet | 45 |
| Of haunted Catskill break; | |
| Or rouse those dreamy dryads, | |
| The nymphs of Echo Lake. | |
| |
| The hands we’ve led through Germans, | |
| And squeezed, perchance, of yore, | 50 |
| Now deftly grasp the bridle, | |
| The mallet, and the oar. | |
| The eyes that wrought our ruin | |
| On other men look down; | |
| We’re but the broken play-things | 55 |
| They’ve left behind in town. | |
| |
