H. C. Bunner

PAST the Red Box at Vesey Street

Swing two strong tides of hurrying feet,

And up and down and all the day

Rises a sullen roar, to say

The Bowery has met Broadway.

And where the confluent current brawls

Stands, fair and dear and old, St. Paul’s,

Through her grand window looking down

Upon the fever of the town;

Rearing her shrine of patriot pride

Above that hungry human-tide

Mad with the lust of sordid gain,

Wild for the things that God holds vain;

Blind, selfish, cruel—Stay there! out

A man is turning from the rout,

And stops to drop a folded sheet

In the Red Box at Vesey Street.

On goes he to the money-mart,

A broker, shrewd and tricky-smart;

But in the space you saw him stand,

He reached and grasped a brother’s hand:

And some poor bed-rid wretch will find

Bed-life a little less unkind

For that man’s stopping. They who pass

Under St. Paul’s broad roseate glass

Have but to reach their hands to gain

The pitiful world of prisoned pain.

The hospital’s poor captive lies

Waiting the day with weary eyes,

Waiting the day, to hear again

News of the outer world of men,

Brought to him in a crumpled sheet

From the Red Box at Vesey Street.

For the Red Box at Vesey Street

Was made because men’s hearts must beat;

Because the humblest kindly thought

May do what wealth has never bought.

That journal in your hand you hold

To you already has grown old,—

Stale, dull, a thing to throw away,—

Yet since the earliest gleam of day

Men in a score of hospitals

Have lain and watched the whitewashed walls;

Waiting the hour that brings more near

The Life so infinitely dear—

The Life of trouble, toil, and strife,

Hard, if you will—but Life, Life, Life!

Tell them, O friend! that life is sweet

Through the Red Box at Vesey Street.

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