IN THE STREET

I pass before the windows lit

        With inward, curtained light,

And in the houses I see flit

Now and again shadows that hit

        The curtain's yellowed white.

Others a little gleam but show:

Inside, the people chat, I know.

And I feel cold and feel alone,

        Not that I no one have,

But - ah that dreams should ne’er be done! -

That among many I am one,

        As among flowers a grave;

One, and more lonely than can be

Imagined conceivably.

If l were born not to aspire

        Beyond the life that lead

These people whom life cannot tire,

Who chat and slumber by the fire

        Contentedly indeed,

Behind those curtains, by that light

That to the street is somewhat bright;

Could I no more aspire than these,

        Were all my wishes bound

In family or social ease,

In worldly, usual jollities

        Or children playing round,

Happy were I but to have then

The usual life of usual men.

But oh! I have within my heart

        Things that cannot keep still -

A mystic and delirious smart

That doth a restlessness impart,

        An ache, a woe, an ill;

I wearied Sysyphus I groan

Against the world's ironic stone.

I, the eternally excluded

        From socialness and mirth,

The aching heart whose mind has brooded

Till thought turned raving mad hath flooded

        The soul that gave it birth ­-

I weep to know I have in me

Aught at once joy and misery.

And cold before the normal, cold

        And fear‑struck I remain,

As one old, formidably old,

Who doth portentous secrets hold

        That he cannot explain

But which the world's show doth suggest

Unto his mind that knows not rest.

How good after dinner to chat

        And sit in half a sleep,

Without a duty‑sense to strike flat

All ease, all cosiness to abate

        An aspiration deep;

To have an ease no pains do throng

Nor felt as an ease that is wrong.

A home, a rest, a child, a wife ­-

        None of these are for me

Who wish for aught beyond this life

With an incessant inner strife

        That knows not victory.

Ay me! and none to comprehend

This wish that doth all things transcend.

Some in some theatre are away

        Or other place of joy

And keep, for ever glad and gay,

The hounds of thought and care at bay

        That cannot laugh or toy:

These are awaited in some homes,

A faint light from their windows comes.

A cosiness these homes must steep

        In something like a slumber,

And in that surface‑living deep

'Tis hard to know that hearts do keep.

        ......

Yet these are normal; I that sigh

And dread their living - what am I?

Oh joy! oh height of happiness!

        To wish no more than life,

To feel of pleasure, of distress,

A normal more, a normal less,

        By friend or child or wife!

None of these for my soul can be

For more than madness is in me.

I weep sad tears - oh, not to live

        As these in human joy!

Oh, that I could as much believe

As sense and custom joint can give

        Which living cannot cloy!

Man's happiness is poor, I know,

But true - a thing all unlike woe.

Sometimes I dream that I might sit

        By my own fire, and quiet

Might see my wife and children flit

Half in a sleep and not a whit

        In one of dreamy riot;

And I might noble be and pure

In mind, not stupid or obscure.

Sometimes I dream one of these homes

        Secluded socially

One for the many thousand tomes

Of life might keep my heart that roams

        Weak, desolate and free;

That quiet haply might console

My aching heart, my pining soul.

But as the thought of such a glad

        Existence simple here,

As if the thing a venom had

I shiver, tremble and grow sad

        As with a mystic fear;

I dread to think my life might pass

Like that of men, as is and was.

I dread to think of a life sweet

        By family and friends.

Mine eyes the finite that they meet

Abhor - the houses and the street.

        And all things that have ends.

I know not to what I aspire,

Yet know this I cannot desire.

So always incompatible

        And by the usual cold,

I go about, my own deep hell,

Hearing to toll in me the bell

        That tells me I grow old,

Yet this in such an accent strange

lt bears the mystery of Change.

And so - alas! must e'er I be

A stranger everywhere;

The leper in his leprosy

In his exclusion nears not me

        Who cannot living bear:

The world my home, my brother men

Are prisons, chains that bind and pen.

I pass. The windows are behind,

        And I forget their peace,

But tremble yet at what my mind

Conceives and feels; and in the wind

        I wander without cease,

Glad yet sad in me to perceive

Something none other can conceive.