A Night-Piece

I climbed the other day up to the roof

Of the commanding and palatial Home for Asiatics

And looked across the city at the hour of no-light.

Across great space of dark I looked,

But the skirt of darkness had a hundred rents,

Made by the lights of many people's homes.

My life is a great skirt of darkness,

But human kindliness has torn it through,

So that it shows ten thousand gaping rents

Where the light comes in.