City and Everyday Life

Hog butcher for the world, Tool maker, stacker of wheat, Player with railroads and the nation’s freight handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the big shoulders.

At my dying hour, and over my long life, A clock strikes somewhere at the city’s edge.

There is weeping in my heart Like the rain falling on the city. 2

That sweet city [Oxford] with her dreaming spires.

Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o’ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife.

Calm Soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and can not mar.

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city, lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest.

Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home; Thou art not my friend and I’m not thine.

To one who has been long in city pent, ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven.

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs.

Hell is a city much like London— A populous and smoky city.

Society is now one polish’d horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, Rising with her tiara of proud towers At airy distance, with majestic motion, A ruler of the waters and their powers.

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand.

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me: and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture.

Did ye not hear it?—No! ’twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o’er the stony street. On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell. But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Faintly as tolls the evening chime, Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.