Page:Knickerbocker 1864-11 64 5.pdf/23
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1864.]
Broadway.
407
Of a roar like the noise of a restless sea,
Recounting its world-old monody—
Repeating its lonesome monody,
Which stirreth the soul by its wearisome moan,
With a singular sense of being alone;
And I fancy I see, as one sees in a glass,
The naked souls of the people that pass,
With a weird sort of Sense, as a seer in dream
Sees things as they are, not things as they seem:
Mere shadows of men, mere effigies cold,
Mere Hindoos that worship their Vishnus of gold;
For Hindoos you see without crossing the sea,
(And this worship of sense is idolatry,)
In golden pagodas they worship to-day
As they walk and they talk in the din of Broadway.
IV.
Souls withered by passion; souls palsied and sere
With the mildew and blight of 'ten thousand a year;'
Souls scurvy with vices, distorted by crime,
Or dwarfed by long lying for a dollar or dime;
Souls lost to all virtue, which fester in sin,
Till all that God gave them to angels akin—
Till all of God's image, which might have shone there,
Grows shrunken and hideous as it should have been fair;
Souls starving for something—a something forgot
In their madness and blindness—yet knowing it not.
It is not so unpleasant, I aver, on the whole,
To be starving in body as starving in soul;
Yes, starving and shrivelled, or throttled with clay,
Like the souls of full half who are walking Broadway.
V.
From the worship of gold and particular clan,
Ah! when shall they rise to the manhood of man—
To that glory which borrows its spirit from high,
As the rainbow its hues from the sun-litten sky?
Ah! when shall they see what one sees without eyes,
(To be learned and brilliant is not to be wise,)
That souls are not gluttons—the maxim is clear—
To be feasted or fed by 'ten thousand a year,'
To be palsied with gold, to be stifled in sense,
(Like some fabulous Phoenix with feathers of pence,)
Or to vices unnaméd made panders and slaves,
To rot, like some carrion, in sensual graves?
Ah! when shall they learn that the soul must have food
To be high, to be noble, as God meant it should—
To attain its high manhood of beauty and good?
Recounting its world-old monody—
Repeating its lonesome monody,
Which stirreth the soul by its wearisome moan,
With a singular sense of being alone;
And I fancy I see, as one sees in a glass,
The naked souls of the people that pass,
With a weird sort of Sense, as a seer in dream
Sees things as they are, not things as they seem:
Mere shadows of men, mere effigies cold,
Mere Hindoos that worship their Vishnus of gold;
For Hindoos you see without crossing the sea,
(And this worship of sense is idolatry,)
In golden pagodas they worship to-day
As they walk and they talk in the din of Broadway.
IV.
Souls withered by passion; souls palsied and sere
With the mildew and blight of 'ten thousand a year;'
Souls scurvy with vices, distorted by crime,
Or dwarfed by long lying for a dollar or dime;
Souls lost to all virtue, which fester in sin,
Till all that God gave them to angels akin—
Till all of God's image, which might have shone there,
Grows shrunken and hideous as it should have been fair;
Souls starving for something—a something forgot
In their madness and blindness—yet knowing it not.
It is not so unpleasant, I aver, on the whole,
To be starving in body as starving in soul;
Yes, starving and shrivelled, or throttled with clay,
Like the souls of full half who are walking Broadway.
V.
From the worship of gold and particular clan,
Ah! when shall they rise to the manhood of man—
To that glory which borrows its spirit from high,
As the rainbow its hues from the sun-litten sky?
Ah! when shall they see what one sees without eyes,
(To be learned and brilliant is not to be wise,)
That souls are not gluttons—the maxim is clear—
To be feasted or fed by 'ten thousand a year,'
To be palsied with gold, to be stifled in sense,
(Like some fabulous Phoenix with feathers of pence,)
Or to vices unnaméd made panders and slaves,
To rot, like some carrion, in sensual graves?
Ah! when shall they learn that the soul must have food
To be high, to be noble, as God meant it should—
To attain its high manhood of beauty and good?