Chapter I: Front Matter

New York Nocturnes

And Other Poems

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

VERSE:

ORION AND OTHER POEMS. (_Out of Print._) _Lippincott._

IN DIVERS TONES. _D. Lothrop Co._

SONGS OF THE COMMON DAY. _Longmans, Green & Co._

THE BOOK OF THE NATIVE. _Lamson, Wolffe & Co._

PROSE:

THE CANADIANS OF OLD. From the French of de Gaspé. _D. Appleton &
Co._

AROUND THE CAMP FIRE. _T. Y. Crowell & Co._

EARTH’S ENIGMAS. _Lamson, Wolffe & Co._

A HISTORY OF CANADA. _Lamson, Wolffe & Co._

THE FORGE IN THE FOREST. _Lamson, Wolffe & Co._

A SISTER TO EVANGELINE. A Romance of Old Acadia. (_In Press._)
_Lamson, Wolffe & Co._

New York Nocturnes
_And Other Poems_

By
Charles G. D. Roberts

Lamson, Wolffe and Company
Boston, New York and London
MDCCCXCVIII

Copyright, 1898,
By Lamson, Wolffe and Company.

_All rights reserved._

_THE IDEAL_

_To Her, when life was little worth,
When hope, a tide run low,
Between dim shores of emptiness
Almost forgot to flow,--_

_Faint with the city’s fume and stress
I came at night to Her.
Her cool white fingers on my face--
How wonderful they were!_

_More dear they were to fevered lids
Than lilies cooled in dew.
They touched my lips with tenderness,
Till life was born anew._

_The city’s clamour died in calm;
And once again I heard
The moon-white woodland stillnesses
Enchanted by a bird;_

_The wash of far, remembered waves;
The sigh of lapsing streams;
And one old garden’s lilac leaves
Conferring in their dreams._

_A breath from childhood daisy fields
Came back to me again,
Here in the city’s weary miles
Of city-wearied men._

CONTENTS

NEW YORK NOCTURNES

PAGE

The Ideal 5

In the Crowd 9

Night in a Down-town Street 10

At the Railway Station 13

Nocturnes of the Honeysuckle, I 16

Nocturnes of the Honeysuckle, II 17

My Garden 18

Presence 21

Twilight on Sixth Avenue 22

The Street Lamps 24

In Darkness 25

In the Solitude of the City 26

A Nocturne of Exile 28

A Street Vigil 30

A Nocturne of Trysting 32

In a City Room 34

A Nocturne of Consecration 36

OTHER POEMS

An Evening Communion 45

Life and Art 48

Beyond the Tops of Time 49

Dream-Fellows 55

The Atlantic Cable 61

When the Clover Blooms Again 63

At Tide Water 65

The Falling Leaves 67

Marjory 68

The Solitary Woodsman 72

The Stirrup Cup 77

Ice 78

The Hermit 79

“O Thou who bidd’st” 82

Ascription 83

New York Nocturnes

Ὦ Θεοί, τίς ἆρα Κύπρις, ἢ τίς ἵμερος, τοῦδε ξυνήψατο;

New York Nocturnes

In the Crowd

I walk the city square with thee.
The night is loud; the pavements roar.
Their eddying mirth and misery
Encircle thee and me.

The street is full of lights and cries.
The crowd but brings thee close to me.
I only hear thy low replies;
I only see thine eyes.

Night in a Down-town Street

Not in the eyed, expectant gloom,
Where soaring peaks repose
And incommunicable space
Companions with the snows;

Not in the glimmering dusk that crawls
Upon the clouded sea,
Where bourneless wave on bourneless wave
Complains continually;

Not in the palpable dark of woods
Where groping hands clutch fear,
Does Night her deeps of solitude
Reveal unveiled as here.

The street is a grim cañon carved
In the eternal stone,
That knows no more the rushing stream
It anciently has known.

The emptying tide of life has drained
The iron channel dry.
Strange winds from the forgotten day
Draw down, and dream, and sigh.

The narrow heaven, the desolate moon
Made wan with endless years,
Seem less immeasurably remote
Than laughter, love, or tears.

At the Railway Station

Here the night is fierce with light,
Here the great wheels come and go,
Here are partings, waitings, meetings,
Mysteries of joy and woe.

Here is endless haste and change,
Here the ache of streaming eyes,
Radiance of expectant faces,
Breathless askings, brief replies.

Here the jarred, tumultuous air
Throbs and pauses like a bell,
Gladdens with delight of greeting,
Sighs and sorrows with farewell.

Here, ah, here with hungry eyes
I explore the passing throng.
Restless I await your coming
Whose least absence is so long.

Faces, faces pass me by,
Meaningless, and blank, and dumb,
Till my heart grows faint and sickens
Lest at last you should not come.

Then--I see you. And the blood
Surges back to heart and brain.
Eyes meet mine,--and Heaven opens.
You are at my side again.

Nocturnes of the Honeysuckle