ECLIPSE

Once melodies of street-cries washed these walls,

Glad as the refluent song

Of cheerful waters from a happy spring

That shout their way along;

Such cries were born in other days from lips

A spirit taught to sing. Now it is gone!

Memory expects those hymns for shrimp and prawn,

Or the mellifluous chaunt from the black gorge

Of Orpheus inside a murky skin,

Who looked the gold sun in the eye

While garden mists grew thin,

And intoned “Hoppin’ John!”

As when the shadow of the gray eclipse

Haggards the countryside,

When moon-fooled birds have nothing more to say,

And soft untimely bats begin to slide;

As darkness sweeps the morning light away,

So silence brushes music now from lips.

Oh! Can it be the songless spirit of this age

Has slain the ancient music, or that ears

Have harsher thresholds? Only this I know:

The streets grow more discordant with the years;

And that which bids the huckster sing no more,

Will drive the flower-woman from the door.