| Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917. |
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| 138. Night’s Mardi Gras |
| | | By Edward J. Wheeler |
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| NIGHT is the true democracy. When day | |
| Like some great monarch with his train has passed, | |
| In regal pomp and splendor to the last, | |
| The stars troop forth along the Milky Way, | |
| A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray, | 5 |
| On heaven’s broad boulevard in pageants vast. | |
| And things of earth, the hunted and outcast, | |
| Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea, | |
| Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind | |
| Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start, | 10 |
| And specters of dead joy, that shun the light, | |
| And impotent regrets and terrors blind, | |
| Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part | |
| In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night. | |
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