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 @3'twixt ours and the head.@1 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, @3seen@1 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PORTRAIT OF ONE DEAD by CONRAD AIKEN SONG OF TWO CROWS by HAYDEN CARRUTH WHAT THING A BIRD WOULD LOVE by ROBERT FROST HEGIRA by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON BEAUTY THAT IS NEVER OLD by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON GIANT RED WOMAN by CLARENCE MAJOR THE BLACK MONKEY by KATHERINE MANSFIELD THE BURIAL OF BOSTON CORBETT (ONE WARDEN TO ANOTHER) by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |