The Knickerbocker/Volume 64/Number 5/Broadway
BROADWAY.
I.
It is dusk; and the shadows creep over the street,
And they mix with the motion of pattering feet;
They walk, but they talk not—they utter no tones,
And they make not a sound on the foot-worn stones,
As step they keep from square to square,
To the tread of the beggar or the millionaire,
Where houses of stone, through falling glooms,
Uprear their heads like lighted tombs;
Stealing along with so stealthy a tread,
If they did not stir, you would fancy them dead.
But they shrink from the stare of the lamplight glare
With a flickering motion here and there,
(As a murderer shrinks from the flare of day,)
In a guilty, shuddering sort of way.
II.
I sit in my garret; and, nothing to eat,
I list to the ceaseless clatter of feet—
Of the feet of the crowd, which ebbs and flows
With a queer sort of rhythm that nobody knows,
As into the darkness dank and damp
They float like dreams by the furthest lamp,
That lights to avenues of gloom,
Like a dim feu follet to the door of a tomb,
Like a will-o'-the-wisp to the door of a tomb.
I have sat in my garret—where I sit—all day,
In a dreaming, fanciful sort of way,
Half willing to sleep by this star-litten deep,
Where the ships fold their wings, like eagles, to sleep—
To be buried, I say, by this star-litten bay,
Where they bury one gratis—who has nothing to pay.
III.
To the clangor of stages, which pass by the door,
I hark, till it sinks to a far-off roar—
To the languor and moan of a far-off roar—
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?
Not good as men reckon the good to-day,
Not good in a queer, rather obsolete way;
Not 'good, you know, for a million or so,'
But good in God's sense, not in that of Broadway.
VI.
'But all this,' you say, though not without reason,
'Like a soda in May, is somewhat out of season.
We have failings enough—if one seeks them none doubt it;
But what is the use of this prating about it?'
I agree; but—'tis fact—I've been troubled from youth
With an obsolete habit of telling the truth;
'Tis a family failing—I'm sorry for it—
For to lie à la mode is far better than wit;
And many a wit, who has failed at his trade,
With well-managed lying a success might have made,
For the fact is, success very large'y depends
On judicious lying, and there the thing ends;
But bear with a couple of similes, pray,
A propos to these people who are walking Broadway.
VII.
Have you sat by the seaside, some beautiful day
When the sun doth set not a mile away,
With a face as mild as an Eastern moon,
But twice as large as it is at noon—
When the sun stoops down till he dips his hair
Of tangled go'd in the waters bare—
Till he dips his hair in the sounding sea
That heaves with a rhythmical monody—
Repeating its restless monody,
Like the soul of a poet so full of rhyme
That it cannot but sing for a whole lifetime?
Then you know how a life should be set to song,
With a rhythmical pulse as it floats along—
Like the pulse of stream as it floats along,
Its melody weaving in tangled braids
As it stealeth away to the woodland shades,
And, winding itself through many a glen,
Sends its music back to the ears of men:
But how many lives in this din of Broadway
Are set to this rhythm? Just tell me, I pray!
VIII.
Have you sat on the hillsides, some beautiful day
When the sun doth set not a mile away,
And the sunset darts like a golden breeze
Her long light lances through the trees,
Like hints of a world whose monody wells,
Set to the rhythm of Eden bells—
Those Eden bells which in orient tales
Are the leaves of the trees in fairy-like vales,
Whose breezes float to the silver tune
That fountains sing in the month of June,
Stirring the trees and stirring the leaves
To melody through delicious eves?
Then, reader, you know how a life should flow
With a glimpse of skies in its waters below,
As along the meadows sweet streamlets pass
Like music winding through the grass,
Stirring the grass the whole day long
With the tinkling laughter of their song.
But how many lives in this din of Broadway
Have a glimpse of skies in their flow to-day?
IX.
It is midnight: at random through the gloom
Creeps like a spectre from a tomb
An occasional step from those pitiful dens,
Night 'concert-saloons'—they are numbered by tens—
Which—so is man made—like all matters of sin,
Seem palace without and prison within;
Or, like some weird dead city of gleaming mausoles,
Inhabited only by corpses and ghouls—
Yes, corpses—just this dwell a moment upon—
They are dead, though they walk, for their manhood is gone.
But 'tis midnight; I've said nearly all I can say—
To-morrow we meet in the din of Broadway.
X.
And now, as an Arab would say or would sing
In his tales of a lady or ghoul,
By way of a moral I tell you this thing,
(And its maxims are true as a whole,)
That the beggar in soul is often a king,
And the king is a beggar in soul;
That a man may be moneyed and pampered and fat,
And a manikin only in spite of all that;
That one may have wealth and servants at call,
And be only a pauper notwithstanding it all;
That in spite of neglect and of social ban,
A pauper is often far more of a man—
Is surer of heaven and its blisses untold,
Than the millionaire with his worship of gold.
It is dusk; and the shadows creep over the street,
And they mix with the motion of pattering feet;
They walk, but they talk not—they utter no tones,
And they make not a sound on the foot-worn stones,
As step they keep from square to square,
To the tread of the beggar or the millionaire,
Where houses of stone, through falling glooms,
Uprear their heads like lighted tombs;
Stealing along with so stealthy a tread,
If they did not stir, you would fancy them dead.
But they shrink from the stare of the lamplight glare
With a flickering motion here and there,
(As a murderer shrinks from the flare of day,)
In a guilty, shuddering sort of way.
II.
I sit in my garret; and, nothing to eat,
I list to the ceaseless clatter of feet—
Of the feet of the crowd, which ebbs and flows
With a queer sort of rhythm that nobody knows,
As into the darkness dank and damp
They float like dreams by the furthest lamp,
That lights to avenues of gloom,
Like a dim feu follet to the door of a tomb,
Like a will-o'-the-wisp to the door of a tomb.
I have sat in my garret—where I sit—all day,
In a dreaming, fanciful sort of way,
Half willing to sleep by this star-litten deep,
Where the ships fold their wings, like eagles, to sleep—
To be buried, I say, by this star-litten bay,
Where they bury one gratis—who has nothing to pay.
III.
To the clangor of stages, which pass by the door,
I hark, till it sinks to a far-off roar—
To the languor and moan of a far-off roar—
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?
Not good as men reckon the good to-day,
Not good in a queer, rather obsolete way;
Not 'good, you know, for a million or so,'
But good in God's sense, not in that of Broadway.
VI.
'But all this,' you say, though not without reason,
'Like a soda in May, is somewhat out of season.
We have failings enough—if one seeks them none doubt it;
But what is the use of this prating about it?'
I agree; but—'tis fact—I've been troubled from youth
With an obsolete habit of telling the truth;
'Tis a family failing—I'm sorry for it—
For to lie à la mode is far better than wit;
And many a wit, who has failed at his trade,
With well-managed lying a success might have made,
For the fact is, success very large'y depends
On judicious lying, and there the thing ends;
But bear with a couple of similes, pray,
A propos to these people who are walking Broadway.
VII.
Have you sat by the seaside, some beautiful day
When the sun doth set not a mile away,
With a face as mild as an Eastern moon,
But twice as large as it is at noon—
When the sun stoops down till he dips his hair
Of tangled go'd in the waters bare—
Till he dips his hair in the sounding sea
That heaves with a rhythmical monody—
Repeating its restless monody,
Like the soul of a poet so full of rhyme
That it cannot but sing for a whole lifetime?
Then you know how a life should be set to song,
With a rhythmical pulse as it floats along—
Like the pulse of stream as it floats along,
Its melody weaving in tangled braids
As it stealeth away to the woodland shades,
And, winding itself through many a glen,
Sends its music back to the ears of men:
But how many lives in this din of Broadway
Are set to this rhythm? Just tell me, I pray!
VIII.
Have you sat on the hillsides, some beautiful day
When the sun doth set not a mile away,
And the sunset darts like a golden breeze
Her long light lances through the trees,
Like hints of a world whose monody wells,
Set to the rhythm of Eden bells—
Those Eden bells which in orient tales
Are the leaves of the trees in fairy-like vales,
Whose breezes float to the silver tune
That fountains sing in the month of June,
Stirring the trees and stirring the leaves
To melody through delicious eves?
Then, reader, you know how a life should flow
With a glimpse of skies in its waters below,
As along the meadows sweet streamlets pass
Like music winding through the grass,
Stirring the grass the whole day long
With the tinkling laughter of their song.
But how many lives in this din of Broadway
Have a glimpse of skies in their flow to-day?
IX.
It is midnight: at random through the gloom
Creeps like a spectre from a tomb
An occasional step from those pitiful dens,
Night 'concert-saloons'—they are numbered by tens—
Which—so is man made—like all matters of sin,
Seem palace without and prison within;
Or, like some weird dead city of gleaming mausoles,
Inhabited only by corpses and ghouls—
Yes, corpses—just this dwell a moment upon—
They are dead, though they walk, for their manhood is gone.
But 'tis midnight; I've said nearly all I can say—
To-morrow we meet in the din of Broadway.
X.
And now, as an Arab would say or would sing
In his tales of a lady or ghoul,
By way of a moral I tell you this thing,
(And its maxims are true as a whole,)
That the beggar in soul is often a king,
And the king is a beggar in soul;
That a man may be moneyed and pampered and fat,
And a manikin only in spite of all that;
That one may have wealth and servants at call,
And be only a pauper notwithstanding it all;
That in spite of neglect and of social ban,
A pauper is often far more of a man—
Is surer of heaven and its blisses untold,
Than the millionaire with his worship of gold.