Arthur Henry Adams: Verses about City

A morn, a sallow lamp-lit morn,
A dawn that never breaks to day!
Old, old the faces, and forlorn;
The hearts look out, so seared, so grey!
It is as if some upturned stone
Had flung to light a vermin rout—
For things misfeatured, souls unknown,
Stagger in blind amaze about.

Along their gleaming lines of light
The charging trams go, head to ground;
Out from the drifting pathways, white
The faces flash—like faces drowned!
And there with painted features drear,
And eyes whose pathos still is sweet,
The hunted hunters prowl and peer—
Their lair the long, slow-surging street.

BENEATH this narrow jostling street,
Unruffled by the noise of feet,
Like a slow organ-note I hear
The pulses of the great world beat.

Unseen beneath the city’s show
Through this aorta ever flow
The currents of the universe—
A thousand pulses throbbing low!

Unheard beneath the pavement’s din
Unknown magicians sit within
Dim caves, and weave life into words
On patient looms that spin and spin.

There, uninspired, yet with the dower
Of mightier mechanic power,
Some bent, obscure Euripides
Builds the loud drama of the hour!

There, from the gaping presses hurled,
A thousand voices, passion-whirled,
With throats of steel vociferate
The incessant story of the world!

So through this artery from age
To age the tides of passion rage,
The swift historians of each day
Flinging a world upon a page!

And then I pause and gaze my fill
Where cataracts of traffic spill
Their foam into the Circus. Lo!
Look up, the crown on Ludgate Hill!

Remote from all the city’s moods,
In high, untroubled solitudes,
Like an old Buddha swathed in dream,
St. Paul’s above the city broods!

A PAIR of lovers in the street!
I dare not mock: with reverence meet
My unforgetting heart I cheat.

Ah, God, spare me—so soon again
At the barred door to beat in vain,
And find their dalliance such fierce pain!

I, yearning up from Hell’s abyss,
See, dreaming through their worlds of bliss,
This Dante and his Beatrice!

For these the distant goal have won
For which God made the plasm and sun;
His patient labouring is done.

For these each Spring has been a bride,
And lonely worlds were spawned and died.
Chaos for them in birth-throes cried.

Far out in seas of Space forlorn
This crescent wave was slowly born
That thunders on the beach of morn.

Ah, they, so soon to be meshed in
The web of splendour, silken-thin,
The nebulae were set to spin!

Up the long path from joy to joy
Love led the way. Can aught destroy
The task that was the stars’ employ?

Their ecstasy to God is more
Than Lucifer at Heaven’s door
Entreating pardon for his war.

These two are gods, for, by love swayed,
They have God’s special task essayed,
And new worlds for their gladness made.

This little hour so lightly given
Makes earth too mean a place to live in,
And broken toys His Hell and Heaven.

All Time, expectant of their bliss,
Hangs fearful. Space through her abyss
Shudders if they this hour should miss.

For if their kiss they went without,
The stars would be a raining rout,
And time in anguish flicker out.

About God’s room from star to sun
A stealthy slippered Thing would run,
Quenching cold tapers one by one.

But they have kissed. Eternity,
Like a great clock, beats steadily
For these mazed fools—but not for me!

Of God’s wide universe the strands
They hold within their clinging hands;
The stars march on at their commands.

So from this moment blossom free
New universes tirelessly—
Aeons of unguessed ecstasy!

But I can only bow and beat
Vain hands about God’s mercy-seat,
And, still remembering, still entreat.

Surely my penance is complete!
The rack turns grimly when I meet
A pair of lovers on the street

About me leagues of houses lie,
Above me, grim and straight and high,
They climb; the terraces lean up
Like long grey reefs against the sky.

Packed tier on tier the people dwell;
Each narrow, hollow wall is full;
And in that hive of honeycomb,
Remote and high, I have one cell.

And when I turn into my street
I hear in murmurous retreat
A tide of noises flowing out --
The city ebbing from my feet!

And lo! two long straight walls between,
There dwells a little park serene,
Where blackened trees and railings hem
A little handkerchief of green!

Yet I can see across the roof
The sun, the stars and . . . God! For proof --
Between the twisting chimney-pots
A pointing finger, old, aloof!

The traffic that the city rends
Within my quiet haven ends
In a deep murmur, or across
My pool a gentle ripple sends.

A chime upon the silence drab
Paints music; hooting motors stab
The pleasant peace; and, far and faint,
The jangling lyric of the cab!

And when I wander, proud and free,
Through my domain, unceasingly
The endless pageant of the shops
Marches along the street with me.

About me ever blossoming
Like rich parterres the hoardings fling
An opulence of hue, and make
Within my garden endless Spring.

The droning tram-cars spitting light:
And like great bees in drunken flight
Burly and laden deep with bloom,
The 'busses lumbering home at night!

Sometimes an afternoon will fling
New meaning on each sombre thing,
And low upon the level roofs
The sultry sun lies smouldering.

Sometimes the fog -- that faery girl --
Her veil of wonder will unfurl,
And crescent gaunt and looming flat
Are sudden mysteries of pearl!

New miracles the wet streets show;
On stems of flame the gas-lamps glow.
I walk upon the wave and see
Another London drowned below!

And when night comes strange jewels strew
The winding streets I wander through:
Like pearls upon a woman's throat
The street-lamps' swerving avenue!

In every face that passes mine
Unfathomed epics I divine:
Each figure on the pavement is
A vial of untasted wine!

Through lands enchanted wandering,
To all a splendour seems to cling.
Lo! from a window-beacon high
Hope still the Night is questioning!

And so, ere sleep, I lie and mark
Romance's stealthy footsteps. Hark!
The rhythm of the horse's hoof
Bears some new drama through the dark!

So in this tall and narrow street
I lie as in Death's lone retreat
And hear, loud in the pulse of Life,
Eternity upon me beat!

THE WIDE sun stares without a cloud:
Whipped by his glances truculent
The earth lies quivering and cowed.
My heart is hot with discontent:
I hate this haggard continent.

But over the loping leagues of sea
A lone land calls to her children free:
My own land holding her arms to me—
But oh, the long loping leagues of sea.

The grey old city is dumb with heat;
No breeze comes leaping, naked, rude,
Adown the narrow, high-walled street;
Upon the night thick perfumes brood:
The evening oozes lassitude.

But over the edges of my town,
Swept in a tide that ne’er abates,
The riotous breezes tumble down;
My heart looks home, looks home where waits
The Windy City of the Straits!

The land lies desolate and stripped;
Across its waste has thinly strayed
A tattered host of eucalypt
From whose gaunt uniform is made
A ragged penury of shade.

But over my isles the forest drew
A mantle thick—save where a peak
Shows his grim teeth a-snarl—and through
The filtered coolness creek and creek,
Tangled in ferns, in whispers speak.

And there the placid great lakes are;
And brimming rivers proudly force
Their ice-cold tides. Here, like a scar,
Dry-lipped, a withered water-course
Crawls from a long-forgotten source.

My glance, home-gazing, scarce discerns
This listless girl, in whose dark hair
A starry red hibiscus burns;
Her pallid cheeks are like a pair
Of nuns, bloom-ravished, yet so fair.

And like a sin her warm lips flame
In her wan face; swift passions brim
In those brown eyes too soft for blame;
Her form is sinuous and slim—
That lyric line of breast and limb!

But one there waits whose brown face glows,
Whose cheeks with Winter’s kisses smart—
The flushing petals of a rose.
Of earth and sun she is a part;
Her brow is Greek and Greek her heart.

At love she laughs a faint disdain;
Her heart no weakly one to charm;
Robust and fragrant as the rain,
The dark bush soothed her with his balm,
The mountains gave her of their calm.

Her fresh young figure, lithe and tall,
Her radiant eyes, her brow benign,
She is the peerless queen of all—
The maid, the country, that I shrine
In this far-banished heart of mine!

And over the loping leagues of green
A lone land waits with a hope serene—
My own land calls like a prisoner queen—
But oh, the long loping leagues between!

THE dawn hangs heavy on the distant hill,
The darkness shudders slowly into light;
And from the weary bosom of the night
The pent winds sigh, then sink with horror still.
Naked and grey, the guillotine stands square
Upon the hill, while from its base the crowd
Surges out far, and waits, to silence cowed,
Impatient for the thing to happen there.
Listen! The bells within the tower toll
Five naked notes; and down within his cell
The prisoner hears and mutters, “It is well,”
Though like that other knife each cuts his soul.
His sick nerves from the probing echoes shrink,
“This is the end,” he says; “let me be strong;
Let me be brave till then—‘t is not for long:
I must not think of it—I must not think!”
See, through the courtyard, guarded, comes the slight
Thin figure of the anarchist. Amazed,
He sees the thousand faces swiftly raised—
The billows of the crowd break into white!
One narrow, alien glance below, and then
The scene fades dimly from his film-glazed eyes;
And shuddering he sees his past arise—
The cycle of his life begins again.

And as misshapen memories crowd fast
Upon him, jostling in a sudden strife,
Athwart the dull, drab level of his life
Stand sharply out the blood-stains of his past:
His youth, before he knew he had it, lost;
His father's body by an accident
'Neath the rich man's remorseless mill-wheels pent—
A corpse; and sister, mother, brother tossed
Out to the mercy of the merciless.
His mother stricken next; her humble niche
Was needed by the reckless and the rich,
And death was easier than life's loneliness.
His sister, she had fortune in her face,
And won it, too, till Vice's fingers tore
The freshness from her figure, and no more
In idleness she flaunted her disgrace.
He lost her, stifled in the world's wide smother,
For years; till one night on the street they met.
She seized him—he can feel that hot thrill yet!—
She spoke him—knowing not he was her brother!
Wrong reeking of the rich incessantly!
Oppression and oppression o'er again!
Till from the smouldering hate within his brain
Mad fever fired the fuse of Anarchy.

Then plot and cunning, weak, futile and mean,
The maddened one against the many; thus
He strove to strangle Order's octopus—
And gained the goal at last—the guillotine!
It waits him grim and grey; he sees it not,
Nor hears the rising murmur ripple out
To the crowd's edge, and, turning, die in doubt.
The vague, uncertain future threatens—what?
So…shall he speak, fling out his last reply
Why waste the time in trivialities?
One throbbing thought now holds him; and there is
No room for sign or speech—he has to die.
Only a murmur wavers up and shakes
The sullen air, then hesitates and dies;
And the grim hush of horror stifled lies,
Suspended like a billow ere it breaks.
One bitter prayer, half-curse, he mutters when
The knife hangs high above, and the world waits.
But ere it swoops an age it hesitates:
The word is given, breaths are drawn, and then…
With eyes and soul close shut—be swift, relief!—
The prisoner waits the end that does not come.
For hark! that heavy, low, tumultuous hum
That surges, surges till it shouts “ Reprieve! ”

“ Reprieved and pardoned! ” All his senses swim
In a rose-mist! As Sleep's soft hand that soothes
The terse, strained limbs of fevered Day and smoothes
Life's knotted nerves—so comes relief to him.
And when he woke again his soul, set free,
Had wandered far, within a moment's space,
And seen the sadness of God's silent face—
The mighty calm of immortality.
How like a triumph his home-coming! Then
The glorious news that met him, how that Right
Had routed Wrong, for ever faction's fight
Was finished, and the world was one again.
Then swiftly through his swimming, mist-dimmed eyes
He sees the good and great upright again;
And Reason rings the knell of grief and pain;
The gladdened new world lapped in sunlight lies.
Long life was his with honour. On Fame's breath
His name was borne, until in perfect peace—
Glad like a mellow fruit to fall and cease—
His long life ripened richly into death.
Yet none knew this but he . The crowd still waits;
Shoots swift the lightning of the knife, and loud
Roars the hoarse thunder from the sated crowd
And justice has been done. God compensates.