Poem: “The Crowded Street” by William Cullen Bryant

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American Literature – American Poetry – William Cullen Bryant – Poems from William Cullen Bryant
< < < Noon. (From an unfinished Poem)
The White-footed Deer > > >

The Crowded Street

Let me move slowly through the street,
    Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
    The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

How fast the flitting figures come!
    The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
    Where secret tears have left their trace.

They pass—to toil, to strife, to rest;
    To halls in which the feast is spread;
To chambers where the funeral guest
    In silence sits beside the dead.

And some to happy homes repair,
    Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
    The tenderness they cannot speak.
And some, who walk in calmness here,
    Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
    Its flower, its light, is seen no more.

Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame,
    And dreams of greatness in thine eye!
Goest thou to build an early name,
    Or early in the task to die?

Keen son of trade, with eager brow!
    Who is now fluttering in thy snare?
Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
    Or melt the glittering spires in air?

Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
    The dance till daylight gleam again?
Who sorrow o’er the untimely dead?
    Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?

Some, famine-struck, shall think how long
    The cold dark hours, how slow the light,
And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
    Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.

Each, where his tasks or pleasures call,
    They pass, and heed each other not.
There is who heeds, who holds them all,
    In his large love and boundless thought.

These struggling tides of life that seem
    In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
    That rolls to its appointed end.

< < < Noon. (From an unfinished Poem)
The White-footed Deer > > >

American Literature – American Poetry – William Cullen Bryant – Poems from William Cullen Bryant

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