Classic Poem

Down the dark alley a ring of orange light
Glows. God, what leprous tatters of distress,
Droppings of misery, rags of Thy loneliness
Quiver and heave like vermin, out of the night!

Like crippled rats, creeping out of the gloom,
O Life, for one of thy terrible moments there,
Lit by the little flickering yellow flare,
Faces that mock at life and death and doom,

Faces that long, long since have known the worst,
Faces of women that have seen the child
Waste in their arms, and strangely, terribly, smiled
When the dark nipple of death has eased its thirst;

Faces of men that once, though long ago,
Saw the faint light of hope, though far away,--
Hope that, at end of some tremendous day,
They yet might reach some life where tears could flow;

Faces of our humanity, ravaged, white,
Wrenched with old love, old hate, older despair,
Steal out of vile filth-dropping dens to stare
On that wild monstrance of a naphtha light.

They crowd before the stall's bright altar rail,
Grotesque, and sacred, for that light's brief span,
And all the shuddering darkness cries, "All hail,
Daughters and Sons of Man!"

See, see, once more, though all their souls be dead,
They hold it up, triumphantly hold it up,
They feel, they warm their hands upon the Cup;
Their crapulous hands, their claw-like hands break Bread!

See, with lean faces rapturously a-glow
For a brief while they dream and munch and drink;
Then, one by one, once more, silently slink
Back, back into the gulfing mist. They go,

One by one, out of the ring of light!
They creep, like crippled rats, into the gloom,
Into the fogs of life and death and doom,
Into the night, the immeasurable night.