C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Crowded Street
By William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
L
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
The mild, the fierce, the stony face—
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have lost their trace.
To halls in which the feast is spread—
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.
Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.
Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
And dreams of greatness in thine eye!
Go’st thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?
Who is now fluttering in thy snare?
Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires in air?
The dance till daylight gleam again?
Who sorrow o’er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
The cold dark hours, how slow the light;
And some who flaunt amid the throng
Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.
They pass, and heed each other not.
There is Who heeds, Who holds them all
In His large love and boundless thought.
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.