Sometimes, though a moment only,

Some forgotten, quaint and homely Vehicle of me!

Women at your toil,

Women at your leisure

Till the kettle boil,

Snatch of me your pleasure,

Where the broom-straw marks the leaf; Women quiet with your weeping Lest you wake a workman sleeping, Mix me with your grief!

Boys and girls that steal

From the shocking laughter

Of the old, to kneel

By a dripping rafter

Under the discolored eaves,

Out of trunks with hingeless covers
Lifting tales of saints and lovers,

Travelers, goblins, thieves,

Suns that shine by night,

Mountains made from valleys,-

Bear me to the light,

Flat upon your bellies

By the webby window lie,

Where the little flies are crawling,—

Read me, margin me with scrawling, Do not let me die!

Sexton, ply your trade!

In a shower of gravel Stamp upon your spade!

Many a rose shall ravel,

Many a metal wreath shall rust
In the rain, and I go singing

Through the lots where you are flinging Yellow clay on dust!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

A GREY DAY

Grey drizzling mists the moorlands drape,
Rain whitens the dead sea,

From headland dim to sullen cape
Grey sails creep wearily.

I know not how that merchantman
Has found the heart; but 'tis her plan
Seaward her endless course to shape.

Unreal as insects that appall
A drunkard's peevish brain,
O'er the grey deep the dories crawl,
Four-legged, with rowers twain:
Midgets and minims of the earth,
Across old ocean's vasty girth
Toiling-heroic, comical!

I wonder how that merchant's crew
Have ever found the will!

I wonder what the fishers do

To keep them toiling still!

I wonder how the heart of man
Has patience to live out its span,
Or wait until its dreams come true.

William Vaughn Moody

FROM "SONG-FLOWER AND POPPY"

In New York

He plays the deuce with my writing time,
For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws;
He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme,
And he leaves me-well, God knows

It takes the shine from a tunester's line
When a little mate of the deathless Nine
Pipes up under your nose!

For listen, there is his voice again,
Wistful and clear and piercing sweet.
Where did the boy find such a strain
To make a dead heart beat?

And how in the name of care can he bear
To jet such a fountain into the air

In this grey gulch of a street?

Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese?

Umbria under the Apennine?

South, where the terraced lemon-trees

Round rich Sorrento shine?

Venice moon on the smooth lagoon?--
Where have I heard that aching tune,
That boyish throat divine?

Beyond my roofs and chimney pots
A rag of sunset crumbles grey;
Below, fierce radiance hangs in clots
O'er the streams that never stay.

Shrill and high, newsboys cry
The worst of the city's infamy
For one more sordid day.

But my desire has taken sail
For lands beyond, soft-horizoned:

Down languorous leagues I hold the trail,
From Marmalada, steeply throned
Above high pastures washed with light,
Where dolomite by dolomite
Looms sheer and spectral-coned,

To purple vineyards looking south
On reaches of the still Tyrrhene;
Virgilian headlands, and the mouth
Of Tiber, where that ship put in
To take the dead men home to God,
Whereof Casella told the mode
To the great Florentine.

Up stairways blue with flowering weed

I climb to hill-hung Bergamo;

All day I watch the thunder breed

Golden above the springs of Po,

Till the voice makes sure its wavering lure, And by Assisi's portals pure

I stand, with heart bent low.

O hear, how it blooms in the blear dayfall, That flower of passionate wistful song! How it blows like a rose by the iron wall Of the city loud and strong.