William Dean Howells

“ At games of mirth and pastime, unafraid
⁠In their delight; and all so high and proud
⁠They seemed scarce of the earth whereon they trod.
II
I looked again and saw that flowery space
⁠Stirring, as if alive, beneath the tread
⁠That rested now upon an old man's head
And now upon a baby's gasping face,
Or mother's bosom, or the rounded grace
⁠Of a girl's throat; and what had seemed the red
⁠Of flowers was blood, in gouts and gushes shed
From hearts that broke under that frolic pace. ”

“ Was ever told when he should come or go.
But every now and then there bursts upon
⁠The song and mirth a lamentable noise,
⁠A sound of shrieks and sobs, that strikes our joys
Dumb in our breasts; and then, some one is gone. ”

“ And each your portion from the dust
Of those that died, and from the tomb
Made you what you must needs become.
I do not hold you aught to blame
For sin at second hand, and shame:
Evil could but from evil spring ”

“ IN THE DARK
OW often, when I wake from sleep at night,
⁠I search my consciousness to find the ill
⁠That has lurked formlessly within it, still
Haunting me with a shadowy affright;
And try to seize it and to know aright
⁠Its vague proportions, and my frantic will
⁠Runs this way and runs that way, with a thrill
Of horror, to all things that ban or blight! ”

“ ROWSING, the other afternoon, I lay
⁠In that sweet interlude that falls between
⁠Waking and sleeping, when all being is seen
Of one complexion, and the vague dreams play
Among the thoughts, and the thoughts go astray
⁠Among the dreams. ”

“ With little varying circumstance in their shame;
Burglaries, arsons, thefts, and forgeries
Had their own averages as well as these;
And from these figures science can discern
The future in the past. We but return
Upon our steps, although they seem so free.
The thing that has been is that which shall be.
Dark prophet, yes! But still somehow the round
Is spiral, and the race's feet have found
The path rise under them which they have trod.
Your facts are facts, yet somewhere there is God. ”

“ Of idleness, like rich men from the first.
Some hid his money in the earth, a root
From which should grow a flower of deadly fruit;
Some kept, and put it out at usury,
And made men slaves with it that had been free. ”

“ WO people on a bench in Boston Common,
An ordinary laboring man and woman,
Seated together,
In the November weather
Slit with a thin, keen rain;
The woman's mouth purple with cold and pain,
And her eyes fixed as if they did not see
The passers trooping by continually,
Smearing the elm leaves underfoot that fall
Before her on the miry mall ”

“ Have our brief being and pass, we know not where or why.
II
We have not to consent or to refuse;
It is not ours to choose:
We come because we must,
We know not by what law, if unjust or if just. ”

“ I will claim ere you depart.
III
⁠I am Race, and both are mine,
Mortal Age and Youth divine:
Mine to grant, but not in fee;
Both again revert to me
From each that lives, that I may give
Unto each that yet shall live. ”

“ An outcast—and she asked our leave to attend
The ceremony, and then asked us to give
The silver coffin plate, carved with his name,
And the flowers, to her." "That was touching. She
Had some good left in her infamy." ”