more vivid day--
Make way for Spring;
Make way!

IN A CAB

Rain--and the lights of the city,
Blurred by the mist on the pane.
A thing without passion or pity--
This is the rain.

It beats on the roof with derision,
It howls at the doors of the cab--
Phantoms go by in a vision,
Distorted and drab.

Torpor and dreariness greet me;
All of the things I abhor
Rise to confront and defeat me,
As I ride to your door...

At last you have come; you have banished
The gloom of each rain-haunted street--
The tawdry surroundings have vanished;
The evening is sweet.

Now the whole city is dreamlike;
The rain plays the lightest of tunes;
The lamps through the mist make it seem like
A city of moons.

No longer my fancies run riot;
I hold the most magic of charms--
You smile at me, warm and unquiet,
Here in my arms.

I do not wonder or witness
Whether it rains or is fair;
I only can think of your sweetness,
And the scent of your hair.

I am deaf to the clatter and drumming,
And life is a thing to ignore...
Alas, my beloved, we are coming
Once more to your door!...

You have gone; it is listless and lonely;
The evening is empty again;
The world is a blank--there is only
The desolate rain.

SUMMER NIGHT--BROADWAY

Night is the city's disease.
The streets and the people one sees
Glow with a light that is strangely inhuman;
A fever that never grows cold.
Heaven completes the disgrace;
For now, with her star-pitted face,
Night has the leer of a dissolute woman,
Cynical, moon-scarred and old.

And I think of the country roads;
Of the quiet, sleeping abodes,
Where every tree is a silent brother
And the hearth is a thing to cling to.
And I sicken and long for it now--
To feel clean winds on my brow,
Where Night bends low, like an all-wise mother
Looking for children to sing to.

HAUNTED

Between the moss and stone
The lonely lilies rise;
Wasted and overgrown
The tangled garden lies.
Weeds climb about the stoop
And clutch the crumbling walls;
The drowsy grasses droop--
The night wind falls.

The place is like a wood;
No sign is there to tell
Where rose and iris stood
That once she loved so well.
Where