| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917. |
| |
| 424. A City Afternoon |
| | | By Edith Wyatt |
| |
| |
| GREEN afternoon serene and bright, along my street you sail away | |
| Sun-dappled like a ship of light that glints upon a rippled bay. | |
| Afar, freight-engines call and toll; the sprays flash on the fragrant grass; | |
| The children and the nurses stroll; the charging motors plunge and pass. | |
| Invisibly the shadows grow, empurpling in a rising tide | 5 |
| The walks where light-gowned women go, white curb, gray asphalt iris-dyed. | |
| A jolting trolley shrills afar; nasturtiums blow, and ivy vines; | |
| Wet scents of turf and black-smoothed tar float down the roof-trees’ vergent lines. | |
| Where will you go, my afternoon, that glints so still and swift away, | |
| Blue-shaded like a ship of light bound outward from a wimpled bay? | 10 |
| Oh—thrilling, pulsing, dark and bright, shall you, your work, your pain, your mirth, | |
| Fly into the immortal night and silence of our mother earth? | |
| She bore all Eden’s green and dew, and Persia’s scented wine and rose, | |
| And, flowering white against the blue, acanthus leaf and marbled pose. | |
| And deep the Maenad’s choric dance, Crusader’s cross, and heathen crest | 15 |
| Lie sunk with rose and song and lance all veiled and vanished in her breast. | |
| |
| And all those afternoons once danced and sparkled in the sapphire light | |
| And iris shade as you have glanced, green afternoon, in vibrant flight. | |
| As, down dim vistas, echoing, dead afternoons entreat our days, | |
| What breath of beauty will you sing to souls unseen and unknown ways? | 20 |
| How close and how unanswering, green afternoon, you pulse away, | |
| So little and so great a thing—deep towards the bourne of every day. | |
| |
|
|
|
