Progress

THE CITY’S heat is like a leaden pall—

Its lowered lamps glow in the midnight air

Like mammoth orange-moths that flit and flare

Through the dark tapestry of night. The tall

Black houses crush the creeping beggars down,

Who walk beneath and think of breezes cool,

Of silver bodies bathing in a pool;

Or trees that whisper in some far, small town

Whose quiet nursed them, when they thought that

Was merely metal, not a grave of mould

In which men bury all that’s fine and fair.

When they could chase the jewelled butterfly

Through the green bracken-scented lanes or sigh

For all the future held so rich and rare;

When, though they knew it not, their baby cries

Were lovely as the jewelled butterflies.