Trumbull Stickney (1874-1904)
Six O'Clock
1Now burst above the city's cold twilight
2The piercing whistles and the tower-clocks:
3For day is done. Along the frozen docks
4The workmen set their ragged shirts aright.
5Thro' factory doors a stream of dingy light
6Follows the scrimmage as it quickly flocks
7To hut and home among the snow's gray blocks. --
8I love you, human labourers. Good-night!
9Good-night to all the blackened arms that ache!
10Good-night to every sick and sweated brow,
11To the poor girl that strength and love forsake,
12To the poor boy who can no more! I vow
13The victim soon shall shudder at the stake
14And fall in blood: we bring him even now.
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: The Poems of Trumbull Stickney, ed. George Cabot Lodge, William Vaughn Moody, and John Ellerton Lodge (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1905): 208 (no. XXXI from "Later Lyrics"). PS 3537 T525 1905 Robarts Library.
First publication date:
1905
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/14
Composition date:
1903
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abbaabbacdcdcd
Other poems by Trumbull Stickney
