Just 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...
Even as tender parents lovingly
Send a dear child in some true servant’s care
Forth in the street, for larger light and air,
Feeling the sun her guardian will be,
And dreaming with a blushful pride that she
Will earn sweet smiles and glances every-where,
From loving faces; and that passers fair
Will bend, and bless, and kiss her, when...
The past walks here, noiseless, unasked, alone;
Knockers are silent, and beside each stone
Grass peers, unharmed by lagging steps and slow
That with the dark and dawn pass to and fro.
The Past walks here, unseen forevermore,
Save by some heart who, in her half-closed door,
Looks forth and hears the great pulse beat afar,—
The hum and...
Let me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face——
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.
They pass...
Just 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...
Glass was the Street — in tinsel Peril
Tree and Traveller stood —
Filled was the Air with merry venture
Hearty with Boys the Road —
Shot the lithe Sleds like shod vibrations
Emphasized and gone
It is the Past's supreme italic
Makes this Present mean —
