Saturday Night
THE lights of Saturday night beat golden, golden over the pillared street;
The long plate-glass of a Dream-World olden is as the footlights shining sweet.
Street-lamp — flambeau — glamour of trolley — comet-trail of the trains above,
Splash where the jostling crowds are jolly with echoing laughter and human love.
The long plate-glass of a Dream-World olden is as the footlights shining sweet.
Street-lamp — flambeau — glamour of trolley — comet-trail of the trains above,
Splash where the jostling crowds are jolly with echoing laughter and human love.
This is the City of the Enchanted, and these are her Enchanted People;
Far and far is Daylight, haunted with whistle of mill and bell of steeple.
The Eastern tenements loose the women, the Western flats release the wives
To touch, where all the ways are common, a glory to their sweated lives.
Far and far is Daylight, haunted with whistle of mill and bell of steeple.
The Eastern tenements loose the women, the Western flats release the wives
To touch, where all the ways are common, a glory to their sweated lives.
The leather of shoes in the brilliant casement sheds a lustre over the heart;
The high-heaped fruit in the flaring basement glows with the tints of Turner’s art.
Darwin’s dream and the eye of Spencer saw not such a gloried race
As here, in copper light intenser than desert sun, glides face by face.
The high-heaped fruit in the flaring basement glows with the tints of Turner’s art.
Darwin’s dream and the eye of Spencer saw not such a gloried race
As here, in copper light intenser than desert sun, glides face by face.
This drab washwoman dazed and breathless, ray-chiseled in the golden stream.
Is a magic statue standing deathless — her tub and soap-suds touched with Dream.
Yea, in this people, glamour-sunnied, democracy wins heaven again;
Here the unlearned and the unmoneyed laugh in the lights of Lover’s Lane!
Is a magic statue standing deathless — her tub and soap-suds touched with Dream.
Yea, in this people, glamour-sunnied, democracy wins heaven again;
Here the unlearned and the unmoneyed laugh in the lights of Lover’s Lane!
O Dream-World lights that lift through the ether millions of miles to the Milky Way!
To-night Earth rolls through a golden weather that lights the Pleiades where they
play!
Yet . . . God ? Does he lead these sons and daughters ? Yea, do they feel with a
passion that stills,
God on the face of the moving waters, God in the quiet of the hills?
To-night Earth rolls through a golden weather that lights the Pleiades where they
play!
Yet . . . God ? Does he lead these sons and daughters ? Yea, do they feel with a
passion that stills,
God on the face of the moving waters, God in the quiet of the hills?
Yet . . . what if the million-mantled mountains, and what if the million-moving sea
Are here alone in façades and fountains — our deep stone-world of humanity —
We builders of cities and civilizations walled away from the sea and the sod
Must reach, dream-led, for our revelations through one another — as far as God.
Are here alone in façades and fountains — our deep stone-world of humanity —
We builders of cities and civilizations walled away from the sea and the sod
Must reach, dream-led, for our revelations through one another — as far as God.
Through one another — through one another — no more the gleam on sea or land
But so close that we see the Brother — and understand — and understand !
Till, drawn in swept crowd closer, closer, we see the gleam in the human clod,
And clerk and foreman, peddler and grocer, are in our Family of God !
But so close that we see the Brother — and understand — and understand !
Till, drawn in swept crowd closer, closer, we see the gleam in the human clod,
And clerk and foreman, peddler and grocer, are in our Family of God !