THE WALLED CITY

HERE is the mass, you see it astray and astruggle, Deafened with noise, pushing and jestling along; Pleasure and envy and greed, in a feverish juggle, Outside the City of Song. There are the Vapid, watching their hookah’s smoke-bubble; There are the slothful, drunk at the wells of wrong; At a scarlet booth is a Gypsy pleasing the rabble. Outside the City of Song. Here are the credulous, cheated to death by a thimble; Here are the hungry stumbling on to the gong; Here stands a lover grasping a treacherous symbol, Outside the City of Song. Whirl of pretense, of gilding, of tinsel, of glitter; Strange that its patter and laughter can keep up so long; Echo on echo of mocking and cat-call and twitter, Outside the City of Song. Long is the road, that they travel and know not the turning; Black is the pit at the end, and the fear and the wrong; But bitterest, blackest, their last inescapable yearning For the lost City of Song. While in its courts, where the fountains leap up to the zenith, Dreamers and poets and lovers go all the day long, Dazzled, and raptured with pondering all that it meaneth, To dwell in the City of Song.