That would not open in the early light, Push back their plaited sheaths. The rivulet's pool, A silence, the brief sabbath of an hour, Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile, Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade. Now the grey marmot, with uplifted paws, No more sits listening by his den, but steals Abroad, in safety, to the clover field, And crops its juicy blossoms. All the while A ceaseless murmur from the populous town Swells o'er these solitudes: a mingled sound Of jarring wheels, and iron hoofs that clash Upon the stony ways, and hammer-clang, And creak of engines lifting ponderous bulks, And calls and cries, and tread of eager feet, Innumerable, hurrying to and fro. Noon, in that mighty mart of nations, brings No pause to toil and care. With early day Began the tumult, and shall only cease NOON. When midnight, hushing one by one the sounds Thus, in this feverish time, when love of gain 351 THE CROWDED STREET. LET me move slowly through the street, Filled with an ever-shifting train, Amid the sound of steps that beat The murmuring walks like autumn rain. How fast the flitting figures come! The mild, the fierce, the stony face; Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace. They pass to toil, to strife, to rest; To chambers where the funeral guest In silence sits beside the dead. And some to happy homes repair, Where children, pressing cheek to cheek, With mute caresses shall declare The tenderness they cannot speak. THE CROWDED STREET. 353 And some, who walk in calmness here, Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame, Keen son of trade, with eager brow! Who of this crowd to-night shall tread Some, famine-struck, shall think how long Each, where his tasks or pleasures call, |