Читать книгу Rivers to the Sea - Sara Teasdale - Страница 19

VIVID with love, eager for greater beauty

Out of the night we come

Into the corridor, brilliant and warm.

A metal door slides open,

And the lift receives us.

Swiftly, with sharp unswerving flight

The car shoots upward,

And the air, swirling and angry,

Howls like a hundred devils.

Past the maze of trim bronze doors,

Steadily we ascend.

I cling to you

Conscious of the chasm under us,

And a terrible whirring deafens my ears.

The flight is ended.

We pass thru a door leading onto the ledge—

Wind, night and space

Oh terrible height

Why have we sought you?

Oh bitter wind with icy invisible wings

Why do you beat us?

Why would you bear us away?

We look thru the miles of air,

The cold blue miles between us and the city,

Over the edge of eternity we look

On all the lights,

A thousand times more numerous than the stars;

Oh lines and loops of light in unwound chains

That mark for miles and miles

The vast black mazy cobweb of the streets;

Near us clusters and splashes of living gold

That change far off to bluish steel

Where the fragile lights on the Jersey shore

Tremble like drops of wind-stirred dew.

The strident noises of the city

Floating up to us

Are hallowed into whispers.

Ferries cross thru the darkness

Weaving a golden thread into the night,

Their whistles weird shadows of sound.

We feel the millions of humanity beneath us,—

The warm millions, moving under the roofs,

Consumed by their own desires;

Preparing food,

Sobbing alone in a garret,

With burning eyes bending over a needle,

Aimlessly reading the evening paper,

Dancing in the naked light of the café,

Laying out the dead,

Bringing a child to birth—

The sorrow, the torpor, the bitterness, the frail joy

Come up to us

Like a cold fog wrapping us round.

Oh in a hundred years

Not one of these blood-warm bodies

But will be worthless as clay.

The anguish, the torpor, the toil

Will have passed to other millions

Consumed by the same desires.

Ages will come and go,

Darkness will blot the lights

And the tower will be laid on the earth.

The sea will remain

Black and unchanging,

The stars will look down

Brilliant and unconcerned.

Beloved,

Tho' sorrow, futility, defeat

Surround us,

They cannot bear us down.

Here on the abyss of eternity

Love has crowned us

For a moment

Victors.