Page:Knickerbocker 1864-11 64 5.pdf/22

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Broadway.
[November,

BROADWAY.

BY F. GERRY FAIRFIELD.

I.It is dusk; and the shadows creep over the street,And they mix with the motion of pattering feet;They walk, but they talk not—they utter no tones,And they make not a sound on the foot-worn stones,As step they keep from square to square,To the tread of the beggar or the millionaire,Where houses of stone, through falling glooms,Uprear their heads like lighted tombs;Stealing along with so stealthy a tread,If they did not stir, you would fancy them dead.But they shrink from the stare of the lamplight glareWith a flickering motion here and there,(As a murderer shrinks from the flare of day,)In a guilty, shuddering sort of way.II.I sit in my garret; and, nothing to eat,I list to the ceaseless clatter of feet—Of the feet of the crowd, which ebbs and flowsWith a queer sort of rhythm that nobody knows,As into the darkness dank and dampThey float like dreams by the furthest lamp,That lights to avenues of gloom,Like a dim feu follet to the door of a tomb,Like a will-o'-the-wisp to the door of a tomb.I have sat in my garret—where I sit—all day,In a dreaming, fanciful sort of way,Half willing to sleep by this star-litten deep,Where the ships fold their wings, like eagles, to sleep—To be buried, I say, by this star-litten bay,Where they bury one gratis—who has nothing to pay.III.To the clangor of stages, which pass by the door,I hark, till it sinks to a far-off roar—To the languor and moan of a far-off roar—
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