Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.
Union Square (abridged)Walter Malone
I
The white, the blue—the yellow and the red,
The sparrow tripping on their pads beyond,
And splashing dewdrops on his wings and head.
Reveals a bosom with a roseate glow,
As in her gorgeous old Egyptian lair
She fascinated heroes long ago.
With dewy eyes a-peep through hazy curls,
When years are poems, every month a rose,
All morns are rubies and all noons are pearls.
Of listless loungers, miserable and low,
With backs bent double, wrinkled faces bowed,
Or, aimless, straggling by with footsteps slow.
Forsaken, friendless, waiting but for death,
When, like the dead leaves that around them flit,
They fall to be forgotten in a breath.
Dreaming of dead days with their holy calm,
Before her happy heart was turned to stone,
And slumber to her spirit brought no balm.
Who with glad heart unto the city came,
Sees manhood years his high-born hopes destroy,
And slay his dreams of fortune and of fame.
Like radiant cactus blossoms, blaze on high;
The city seems a world of warlike camps,
While Broadway with his legions thunders by.
The mimic woes of actors on the stage,
But not one tear for actual grief shall be,
The snares for childhood or the pangs of age.
Bedizened creatures in their fashion flaunt,
While this starved outcast, planning suicide,
Steals back to perish in his dismal haunt.
Man heeds not when his brother’s plaint is made;
Strange, that the brightest, whitest light of all
Should cast the deepest and the darkest shade!
To those most worthy of its love and care.
If Christ returned to-night, He too would stand
Homeless and friendless, here in Union Square.