dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Book of New York Verse  »  John Curtis Underwood

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

Herald Square

John Curtis Underwood

YOU who have felt the pressure and made good,

Who cold and hungry heard the presses thunder;

And watched with eyes that little understood

Sheet after sheet show white, and double under;

And saw beside you there some face of wood,

Some well-clad idler’s stare of vacant wonder;

Clubman, collegian, child or priest or maid:

Have you not envied them their careless faces,

Their lives untried, untainted, unafraid;

Their linen white? These are the printless spaces,

The margins for your mark. His ink may fade,

God’s sheet moves on. You would not change your places.