Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/434

406 IV

And now, in the days of peace, no squadron charging by,

But hark! down the street a sharp reiterant stroke and clamor,

A rhythmic beating of hoofs, a galloping louder, closer,

And again a youth leaps quick to the crossing of crowded ways,

And he swings his arms and shouts, and clears, through the human currents,

A path for the ringing ambulance, hurrying, hurrying, hurrying

To a place where a child has fallen, is wounded nigh unto death,

That the child may be tenderly lifted and skillfully nursed and tended—

Engine and hurrying ambulance screaming, ringing, impatient,

Filling the frightened streets with echoes of old-time wars,

Laden with men of might, skilled and fierce and determined—

Not as of old to maim, to harry and scatter destruction;

Not to take life, but to save it; not to kill, but to rescue the perishing.

A TRAGEDY OF TO-DAY

(NEW YORK, 1905)

I

a little theater, in the Jewry of the New World, I sat among the sad-eyed exiles;

Narrow was the stage and meagerly appointed, and the players gave themselves up utterly to their art;

And, before our eyes, were enacted scenes of a play that scarcely seemed a play.