The Street Behind Yours

THE night droops down upon the street
Shade after shade.     A solemn frown
     Is pressing to
     A deeper hue
The houses drab and brown,
Till each in blackness touch and meet,
Are mixed and melted down.

All is so silent. Not a sound
Comes through the dark. The gas-lamps show
     From here and there
     In feeble glare
The pavement cracked below,
And the greasy, muddy ground,
And the houses in a row.

Those rigid houses: black and sour.
Each dark, thin building stretching high.
     Rank after rank
     Of windows blank
Stare from a sullen eye,
With doleful aspect scowl and glower
At the timid passer-by.

And down between those spectre files,
The narrow roadway, thick with mud,
     Doth crouch and hide,
     While close beside
The gutter churns a flood
Of noisome water through the piles
Of garbage thick as blood.

And tho' 'tis silent, tho' no sound
Crawls from the blackness thickly spread,
     Yet darkness brings
     Grirn, noiseless things
That walk as they were dead.
They glide, and peer, and steal around,
With stealthy, silent tread.

You dare not walk ; that awful crew
Might speak or laugh as you pass by,
     Might touch and paw
     With a formless claw,
Or leer from a sodden eye,
Might whisper awful things they knew,
Or wring their hands and cry.

See, in the doorway, squatting there
Back in the blackness, rocking slow—
     That a babe can rest
     On the battered breast
She urges to and fro,
She croons no song, she prays no prayer,
If any such she know.

She rocks and looks with a fixed eye
Out from the black cave where she sits
     Silent as stone,
     Nor makes a moan
To the silent hour that flits,
Nor droops one dreary, heart-wrung sigh,
But stares through hell-dark pits.

Heaven send she has no thoughts to sear
Through the drear stretches of the night,
     Sweetness of smiles,
     And childish wiles,
A future beckoning bright,
When the hands of a man held nought of fear
And the lips on her lips were light.

There is the doorway mean and low,
And there are the houses drab and brown,
     And the night's black pall,
     And the hours that crawl,
And the forms that peer and frown,
And the lamp's dim flare on the slush below,
And the gutter grumbling down.

Insurrections [1909]