THE MORNING STREET.


I walk alone the Morning Street,
Filled with the silence strange and sweet:
All seems as lone, as still, as dead,
As if unnumbered years had fled,
Letting the noisy Babel be
Without a breath, a memory.
The light wind walks with me, alone,
Where the hot day like flame was blown;
Where the wheels roared and dust was beat,
The dew is in the Morning Street.

Where are the restless throngs that pour
Along this mighty corridor
While the noon flames? the hurrying crowd
Whose footsteps make the city loud?
The myriad faces? hearts that beat
No more in the deserted street?--
Those footsteps, in their dream-land maze,
Cross thresholds of forgotten days;
Those faces brighten from the years
In morning suns long set in tears;
Those hearts--far in the Past they beat--
Are singing in _their_ Morning Street.

A city 'gainst the world's gray Prime,