Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AT HALF-PAST FIVE; A FEBRUARY FANCY, by ANDREW EDWARD WATROUS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AT HALF-PAST FIVE; A FEBRUARY FANCY, by                    
First Line: This is a common dream enough
Last Line: As night came down at half-past five.
Subject(s): Broadway, New York City


This is a common dream enough—
You've dreamt it, friend, and so have I
Along with like romantic stuff
Of how and when a man would die.
Futile! It matters little, when
Upon Death's roll we're reached and read
Where are we; the one wish is then
For more names 'twixt ours and the head.
We lazy fellows like to prate
Of battles o'er and marches done;
Yet in the grim king's army great,
Conscript, methinks, is every one.
Yet more a fool than dreamer he
(And fools in this are most alive)
Who may in dreams, seen dreams to be,
Joy not. I'd die at half-past five,
Then when the flood of Broadway's tide
Sets upward through the winter mist
From the slim city's either side,
Drawn like thin glove on slender wrist;
With all the league of lights aflare,
Above the hurrying roar and bustle
That makes for avenue and square,
As if for life were strained each muscle;
When Trinity points, there below,
Still skyward, with its awful face
Framed by the red sun's afterglow,
In solemn flame from spire to base—
Then, in this queer old cross-town street,
By some dim window, where, at length,
Day, dying, wholly failed to meet
The task that taxed its noonday strength,
As in my dull ear duller grew
The hum, as fainter to my eyes
The shimmer of the street-lamps through
The mist that took in two worlds' rise,
A moment would my numb brain seize
What prank Fate played so straight-faced well,
To keep me toiling like to these
For what I could not dying tell—
A moment would there at the pest
Flash laughter—far would buzz their hive,
Then stilled this beat here in the breast,
As night came down at half-past five.





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