Question

poem on life in city

Answer 1

City! I am true son of thine;

Ne'er dwelt I where great mornings shine

  Around the bleating pens;

Ne'er by the rivulets I strayed,

And ne'er upon my childhood weighed

  The silence of the glens.

Instead of shores where ocean beats

I hear the ebb and flow of streets.

Black Labor draws his weary waves

Into their secret moaning caves;

  But, with the morning light,

That sea again will overflow

With a long, weary sound of woe,

  Again to faint in night.

Wave am I in that sea of woes,

Which, night and morning, ebbs and flows.

I dwelt within a gloomy court,

Wherein did never sunbeam sport;

  Yet there my heart was stirred --

My very blood did dance and thrill,

When on my narrow window-sill

Spring lighted like a bird.

Poor flowers! I watched them pine for weeks,

With leaves as pale as human cheeks.

Afar, one summer, I was borne;

Through golden vapors of the morn

  I heard the hills of sheep:

I trod with a wild ecstasy

The bright fringe of the living sea:

  And on a ruined keep

I sat, and watched an endless plain

Blacken beneath the gloom of rain.

Oh, fair the lightly-sprinkled waste,

O'er which a laughing shower has raced!

  Oh, fair the April shoots!

Oh, fair the woods on summer days,

While a blue hyacinthine haze

  Is dreaming round the roots!

In thee, O city! I discern

Another beaity, sad and strern.

Draw thy fierce streams of blinding ore,

Smite on a thousand anvils, roar

  Down the harbor-bars;

Smoulder in smoky sunsets, flare

On rainy nights; with street and square

  Lie empty to the stars.

From terrace proud to alley base

I know thee as my mother's face.

When sunset bathes thee in his gold,

In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled,

  They smoke is dusky fire;

And, from the glory round thee poured,

A sunbeam like an angel's sword

  Shivers upon a spire.

Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream!

While the blue night crept up the stream.

The wild train plunges in the hills,

He shrieks across the midnight rills;

  Streams through the shifting glare,

The roar and flap of foundry fires,

That shake with light the sleeping shires;

  And on the moorlands bare

He sees afar a crown of light

Hang o'er thee in the hollow night.

And through thy heart as through a dream,

Flows on that black disdainful stream;

  All scornfully it flows,

Between the huddled gloom of masts,

Silent as pines unvexed by blasts --

  'Tween lamps in streaming rows,

O wondrous sight! O stream of dread!

O long, dark river of the dead!

Afar, the banner of the year

Unfurls: but dimly prisoned here,

  Tis only when I greet

A dropt rose lying in my way,

A butterfly that flutters gay

  Athwart the noisy street,

I know the happy Summer smiles

Around thy suburbs, miles on miles.

'Twere neither pæan now, nor dirge,

The flash and thunder of the surge

  On flat sands wide and bare;

No haunting joy or anguish dwells

In the green light of sunny dells,

  Or in the starry air.

Alike to me the desert flower,

The rainbow laughing o'er the shower

While o'er thy walls the darkness sails,

I lean against the churchyard rails;

  Up in the midnight towers

The belfried spire, the street is dead,

I hear in silence overhead

  The clang of iron hours:

It moves me not -- I know her tomb

Is yonder in the shapeless gloom