Page:Foliage, various poems.djvu/65

 I saw at night the City's lights shine bright,

A greater milky way; how in its spell

It fascinated with ten thousand eyes;

Like those sweet wiles of an enchantress who

Would still detain her knight gone cold in love;

It was an iceberg with long arms unseen,

That felt the deep for vessels far away.

All things seemed strange, I stared like any child

That pores on some old face and sees a world

Which its familiar granddad and his dame

Hid with their love and laughter until then.

My feet had not yet felt the cruel rocks

Beneath the pleasant moss I seemed to tread.

But soon my ears grew weary of that din,

My eyes grew tired of all that flesh and stone;

And, as a snail that crawls on a smooth stalk,

Will reach the end and find a sharpened thorn—

So did I reach the cruel end at last.

I saw the starving mother and her child,

Who feared that Death would surely end its sleep,

And cursed the wolf of Hunger with her moans.

And yet, methought, when first I entered there,