A dove-grey evening, dusk empearled
By lamps along the fading slums.
Out of the sky a silence comes,
A honey on the wormwood world.
The flirting adolescents stand
And hush their tingling turbid vows.
For softly on their foolish brows
The evening lays a sober hand.
Even the butcher, he who shares
The corner-shop with "Boots and Shoes,"
Although he has no time to lose,
Delays to light the naphtha flares.
A bleary woman down the road
With a large twin on either arm,
Her wits are stolen by the charm,
She quite forgets her puling load.
I know not in what twilight stream
She bathes her dropsy-swollen feet,
But they were fair as dawn and fleet,
In the dead girlhood of her dream.