Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

In New York

William Vaughn Moody

HE plays the deuce with my writing time,

For the penny my sixth-floor neighbour throws;

He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme,

And he leaves me—well, God knows

It takes the shine from a tunester’s line

When a little mate of the deathless Nine

Pipes up under your nose!

For listen, there is his voice again,

Wistful and clear and piercing sweet.

Where did the boy find such a strain

To make a dead heart beat?

And how in the name of care can he bear

To jet such a fountain into the air

In this grey gulch of a street?

Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese?

Umbria under the Apennine?

South, where the terraced lemon-trees

Round rich Sorrento shine?

Venice moon on the smooth lagoon?—

Where have I heard that aching tune,

That boyish throat divine?

Beyond my roofs and chimney pots

A rag of sunset crumbles grey;

Below, fierce radiance hangs in clots

O’er the streams that never stay.

Shrill and high, newsboys cry

The worst of the city’s infamy

For one more sordid day.

But my desire has taken sail

For lands beyond, soft-horizoned:

Down languorous leagues I hold the trail,

From Marmalada, steeply throned

Above high pastures washed with light,

Where dolomite by dolomite

Looms sheer and spectral-coned.

To purple vineyards looking south

On reaches of the still Tyrrhene;

Virgilian headlands, and the mouth

Of Tiber, where that ship put in

To take the dead men home to God,

Whereof Casella told the mode

To the great Florentine.

Up stairways blue with flowering weed

I climb to hill-hung Bergamo;

All day I watch the thunder breed

Golden above the springs of Po,

Till the voice makes sure its wavering lure,

And by Assisi’s portals pure

I stand, with heart bent low.

O hear, how it blooms in the blear dayfall,

That flower of passionate wistful song!

How it blows like a rose by the iron wall

Of the city loud and strong.

How it cries “Nay, nay” to the worldling’s way,

To the heart’s clear dream how it whispers, “Yea;

Time comes, though time is long.”

Beyond my roofs and chimney piles

Sunset crumbles, ragged, dire;

The roaring street is hung for miles

With fierce electric fire.

Shrill and high, newsboys cry

The gross of the planet’s destiny

Through one more sullen gyre.

Stolidly the town flings down

Its lust by day for its nightly lust;

Who does his given stint, ’tis known,

Shall have his mug and crust.—

Too base of mood, too harsh of blood,

Too stout to seize the grosser good,

Too hungry after dust!

O hark! how it blooms in the falling dark,

That flower of mystical yearning song;

Sad as a hermit thrush, as a lark

Uplifted, glad, and strong.

Heart, we have chosen the better part!

Save sacred love and sacred art

Nothing is good for long.