What pain, to wake and miss you!
To wake with a tightened heart,
And mouth reaching forward to kiss you!
This then at last is the dawn, and the bell
Clanging at the farm! Such bewilderment
Comes with the sight of the room, I cannot tell.
It is raining. Down the half-obscure road
Four labourers pass with their scythes
Dejectedly;--a huntsman goes by with his load:
A gun, and a bunched-up deer, its four little feet
Clustered dead.--And this is the dawn
For which I wanted the night to retreat!
Am no longer lame since Spring
Stooped to me where I lay,
And charmed with flute and silver lute
My laggard limbs to play.
Her voice is sweet as long-stored wine;
I leap like a hounded fawn;
I rise and follow over hill and hollow
To the flush of the crimson dawn!
About Soho we went before the light;
We went, unresting six, craving new fun,
New scenes, new raptures, for the fevered night
Of rollicking laughter, drink and song, was done.
The vault was void, but for the dawn’s great star
That shed upon our path its silver flame,
When La Paloma on a low guitar
Abruptly from a darkened casement came--
Harlem! All else shut out, I saw the hall,
And you in your red shoulder sash come dancing
With Val against me languid by the wall,
Your burning coffee-colored eyes keen glancing
Aslant at mine, proud in your golden glory!
I loved you, Cuban girl, fond sweet Diory.
All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.
The Dawn! The Dawn! The crimson-tinted, comes
Out of the low still skies, over the hills,
Manhattan’s roofs and spires and cheerless domes!
The Dawn! My spirit to its spirit thrills.
Almost the mighty city is asleep,
No pushing crowd, no tramping, tramping feet.
But here and there a few cars groaning creep
Along, above, and underneath the street,
Bearing their strangely-ghostly burdens by,
The women and the men of garish nights,
Their eyes wine-weakened and their clothes awry,
Grotesques beneath the strong electric lights.
The shadows wane. The Dawn comes to New York.
And I go darkly-rebel to my work.
Six street ends come together here.
They feed people and wagons into the center.
In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags,
Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies.
Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day.
The people and wagons come and go, out and in.
Triangles of banks and drug stores watch.
The policemen whistle, the trolley cars bump :
Wheels, wheels, feet, feet, all day.
In the false dawn when the chickens blink
And the east shakes a lazy baby toe at to-morrow,
And the east fixes a pink half-eye this way,
In the time when only one milk wagon crosses
These three streets, these six street ends,
It is the sleep time and they rest.
The policeman buys shoes slow and careful ; the teamster
buys gloves slow and careful; they take care of
their feet and hands; they live on their feet and
hands.
The milkman never argues; he works alone and no one
speaks to him; the city is asleep when he is on the
job; he puts a bottle on six hundred porches and
calls it a day's work; he climbs two hundred
wooden stairways ; two horses are company for him ;
he never argues.
The rolling-mill men and the sheet-steel men are brothers
of cinders; they empty cinders out of their shoes
after the day's work; they ask their wives to fix
burnt holes in the knees of their trousers; their
necks and ears are covered with a smut; they scour
Ah, I know what happiness is...!
It is a timid little fawn
Creeping softly up to me
For one caress, then gone
Before I’m through with it ...
Away, like dark from dawn!
Well I know what happiness is...!
It is the break of day that wears
A shining dew decked diadem ...
An aftermath of tears.
Fawn and dawn, emblems of joy ...
I’ve played with them for years,
And always they will slip away
Into the brush of another day.
Little red apple upon the tree,
If you are not in love, fall in love with me ! . . .
From me this night you shall not go.
Not till the dawn, when the first cocks crow.
In the cold I will rise, I will bathe
In waters of ice; myself
Will shiver, and shrive myself,
Alone in the dawn, and anoint
Forehead and feet and hands;
I will shutter the windows from light,
I will place in their sockets the four
Tall candles and set them a-flame
In the grey of the dawn; and myself
Will lay myself straight in my bed,
And draw the sheet under my chin.
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow . . . the hour
Before the dawn . . . the mouth of one
Just dead.