Andrew E. Watrous

A February Fancy

THIS is a common dream enough—

You’ve dreamt it, friend, and so have I

Along with like romantic stuff

Of how and when a man would die.

Futile! It matters little, when

Upon Death’s roll we’re reached and read

Where are we; the one wish is then

For more names ’twixt ours and the head.

We lazy fellows like to prate

Of battles o’er and marches done;

Yet in the grim king’s army great,

Conscript, methinks, is every one.

Yet more a fool than dreamer he

(And fools in this are most alive)

Who may in dreams, seen dreams to be,

Joy not. I’d die at half-past five,

Then when the flood of Broadway’s tide

Sets upward through the winter mist

From the slim city’s either side,

Drawn like thin glove on slender wrist;

With all the league of lights aflare,

Above the hurrying roar and bustle

That makes for avenue and square,

As if for life were strained each muscle;

When Trinity points, there below,

Still skyward, with its awful face

Framed by the red sun’s afterglow,

In solemn flame from spire to base—

Then, in this queer old cross-town street,

By some dim window, where, at length,

Day, dying, wholly failed to meet

The task that taxed its noonday strength,

As in my dull ear duller grew

The hum, as fainter to my eyes

The shimmer of the street-lamps through

The mist that took in two worlds’ rise,

A moment would my numb brain seize

What prank Fate played so straight-faced well,

To keep me toiling like to these

For what I could not dying tell—

A moment would there at the pest

Flash laughter—far would buzz their hive,

Then stilled this beat here in the breast,

As night came down at half-past five.