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From “Many Evenings”
AS evening falls, | |
| And the yellow lights leap one by one | |
| Along high walls | |
| And along black streets that glisten as if with rain, | |
| The muted city seems | 5 |
| Like one in a restless sleep who lies and dreams | |
| Of vague desires, vague memories, and half-forgotten pain….. | |
| Along dark veins like lights the quick dreams run, | |
| Flash, are extinguished, flash again, | |
| To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain | 10 |
| And die away….. | |
| As evening falls, | |
| A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls, | |
| A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare. | |
| The lover rises, the harlot combs her hair, | 15 |
| The dead man’s face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight, | |
| The watchman climbs the stair….. | |
| The bank-defaulter leers at a chaos of figures | |
| And runs among them and is beaten down; | |
| The sick man coughs, and hears the chisels ringing; | 20 |
| The tired clown | |
| Sees the enormous crowd—a million faces | |
| Motionless in their places, | |
| Ready to laugh, and seize, and crush, and tear…. | |
| The dancer smooths her hair, | 25 |
| Laces her golden slippers and runs through the door | |
| To dance once more, | |
| Hearing swift music like an enchantment rise, | |
| Feeling the praise of a thousand eyes. | |
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| As darkness falls, | 30 |
| The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls | |
| Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, | |
| Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. | |
| How shall we live tonight, where shall we turn? | |
| To what new light or darkness yearn? | 35 |
| A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; | |
| And one by one in myriads we descend | |
| By lamp-lit flowered walls, long balustrades, | |
| Through half-lit halls which reach no end. | |
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