BITTER, bitter, A night that kills with a perishing wind, The cold soaks the tight houses, fighting the fires ... The air about the street-lamps is blue with cold, The moon's a disc of ice frozen to the sky, The streets are whipped clean of people: the wanderer blows into the nearest doorway ... Yet before the concert hall The chauffeur sat two hours in the rich woman's limousine While she fed her soul with delicious music indoors ... The policeman passing thought that he slept, and shook him ... He did not sleep: he was dead of the eating cold ... And what is our Art, and our skyscraping Commerce and Traffic, And what our steam-heated Civilization, And what this worry over our tiny Souls, Yea, what this wealth pulled from the Earth by machines and so great that we waste it, If it all comes to this? Benign Brotherhood, do we really want you? Or are you an empty word to cover our feeble spirits? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LINES ON OBSERVING A BLOSSOM [ON THE FIRST OF FEBRUARY 1796] by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE FORBIDDEN FRUIT: 2 by EMILY DICKINSON ON EXPLORATION by JAMES GALVIN TO HIS CONSCIENCE by ROBERT HERRICK GROWTH by MILDRED TELFORD BARNWELL THE LAST MAN: RECEPTION OF EVIL TIDINGS by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES THE BARN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. WIDENING CIRCLES by EDWARD CARPENTER |