Multitudes

Where there are many multitudes in the darkness of the city
That has stamped out the daisies' light,
There is no joy on the faces of the houses,
No flowers or plumage bright,
But a drab multitude of dun-hued sparrows
Hopping mid the People who pass—
Their shadows flickering on the narrow paths,
Shadows of the city's grass.

In the sunshine heavy, intense, and dark,
Faint, unterrene in the night,
Under the fields of treeless stars,
In the thin sifting rain of light,
Where clouds, reclining, with great carved limbs,
Above the city gaze—
Vast, stone-hewed Gods that fled to the sky,
Held fast in night's cold blaze.

The heads of the old in the street-aisled town,
Are images chipped and blurred,
The tide that flowed through their hardening limbs
Now is shrunken and sleeps unstirred,
Leaving a shadow on memory's walls—
Imagination's haunting stain,
Where the tiny billow of vanishing life
Leaps up and leaps in vain.

Multitudes of tulips in boxes standing,
Glazed and smooth and bright;
Multitudes of windows framed and shining,
In the sun's warm, western light;
Multitudes of voices softlier falling
On the pavements and the walls—
The lonely star-serenading winds
Without the city's halls.