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I. HEAVENS! what a scene of splendor and of dash! | |
| What seeming maze, and yet what perfect order! | |
| We feel as if upon destruction’s border | |
| The crowd were treading; we have seen the flash, | |
| And, breathless, look, expecting the loud crash; | 5 |
| Yet all moves on harmonious as the spheres: | |
| Coach, chariot, cab appears and disappears, | |
| And prancing horseman with gay plume and sash; | |
| The lumbering dray with horses huge, the van, | |
| And omnibuses,—count them if you can! | 10 |
| Heavens, what a sight! and yet to ponder well, | |
| The scene has less of grandeur than of gloom, | |
| For, viewed aright, what is this spectacle? | |
| What but a vast procession to the tomb? | |
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II. AWAY with all the tales good men devise | 15 |
| (Good easy men, to their kind feelings dupes) | |
| Of holes and hovels in which misery troops! | |
| Away with all statistics,—they are lies! | |
| Can man misdoubt the witness of his eyes,— | |
| Believe that poverty and suffering dwell | 20 |
| Where old and young are streaming on pell-mell | |
| To Circe’s temple, eager votaries? | |
| It cannot be that mitred heads can loll | |
| In cushioned chariots, drawn by pampered steeds; | |
| That woman, who her tears can scarce control | 25 |
| At Misery’s tale, such flaunting follies heeds, | |
| While thousands, near, are pining with disease, | |
| Whom one kind look of sympathy would ease! | |
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