Portrait of Theodore Dreiser

There were gilded Chinese dragons And tinkling danglers of glass And dirty marble-topped tables Around us, that late night-hour. You ate steadily and silently From a huge bowl of chop-suey Of repellant aspect; While I,—I, and another,— Told you that you had the style neither of William Morris Nor of Walter Pater. And it was perfectly true .... But you continued to occupy yourself With your quarts of chop-suey. And somehow you reminded me Of nothing so much as of the knitting women Who implacably counted stitches while the pride of France Went up to death. Tonight I am alone, A long way from that Chinese restaurant, A long way from wherever you are. And I find it difficult to recall to my memory The image of your large laboring inexpressive face. For I have just turned the last page Of a book of yours— A book large and superficially inexpressive,—like yourself. It has not, any more than the old ones, The style of Pater. But now there are passing before me Interminable figures in tangled procession— Proud or cringing, starved with desire or icy, Hastening toward a dream of triumph or fleeing from a dream of doom,— Passing—passing—passing Through a world of shadows, Through a chaotic and meaningless anarchy, Under heavy clouds of terrific gloom Or through ravishing flashes of knife-edged sunlight— Passing—passing—passing— Their heads haloed with immortal illusion,— The terrible and beautiful, cruel and wonder-laden illusion of life.