Charles G. D. Roberts (1860-1943)
Twilight on Sixth Avenue at Ninth Street
1Over the tops of the houses
2 Twilight and sunset meet.
3The green, diaphanous dusk
4 Sinks to the eager street.
5Astray in the tangle of roofs
6 Wanders a wind of June.
7The dial shines in the clock-tower
8 Like the face of a strange-scrawled moon.
9The narrowing lines of the houses
10 Palely begin to gleam,
11And the hurrying crowds fade softly
12 Like an army in a dream.
13Above the vanishing faces
14 A phantom train flares on
15With a voice that shakes the shadows, --
16 Diminishes, and is gone.
17And I walk with the journeying throng
18 In such a solitude
19As where a lonely ocean
20 Washes a lonely wood.
Notes
3] diaphanous: ethereal, finely textured.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Selected Poems of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (Toronto: Ryerson, 1936): 118. PS 8485 O22A17 Robarts Library.
First publication date:
April
1895
Publication date note: Maple Leaf (April 1895).
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/4/3
Rhyme: abcb
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