Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/120

POEMS OF MANHATTAN Don't vanish in the Milky Way, for

This afternoon you 're wanted here;

Come back! come back! and help me pay for

The bread and cheese and Lager Bier.

PAN IN WALL STREET

A. D. 1867

where the Treasury's marble front

Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations;

Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont

To throng for trade and last quotations;

Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold

Outrival, in the ears of people,

The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled

From Trinity's undaunted steeple,—

Even there I heard a strange, wild strain

Sound high above the modern clamor,

Above the cries of greed and gain,

The curbstone war, the auction's hammer;

And swift, on Music's misty ways,

It led, from all this strife for millions,

To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days

Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.

And as it stilled the multitude,

And yet more joyous rose, and shriller,

I saw the minstrel, where he stood

At ease against a Doric pillar:

One hand a droning organ played,

The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned

Like those of old) to lips that made

The reeds give out that strain impassioned.

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