Page:Foliage, various poems.djvu/67

 To hear that din all day, sometimes my mind

Went crazed, and it seemed strange, as I were lost

In some vast forest full of chattering apes.

How sick I grew to hear that lasting noise,

And all those people forced across my sight,

Knowing the acres of green fields and woods

That in some country parts outnumbered men;

In half an hour ten thousand men I passed—

More than nine thousand should have been green trees.

There on a summer's day I saw such crowds

That where there was no man man's shadow was;

Millions all cramped together in one hive,

Storing, methought, more bitter stuff than sweet.

The air was foul and stale; from their green homes

Young blood had brought its fresh and rosy cheeks,

Which soon turned colour, like blue streams in flood.

Aye, solitude, black solitude indeed,

To meet a million souls and know not one;

This world must soon grow stale to one compelled