Twilight on Sixth Avenue at Ninth Street
Over the tops of the houses
Twilight and sunset meet.
The green, diaphanous dusk
Sinks to the eager street.
Astray in the tangle of roofs
Wanders a wind of June.
The dial shines in the clock-tower
Like the face of a strange-scrawled moon.
The narrowing lines of the houses
Palely begin to gleam,
And the hurrying crowds fade softly
Like an army in a dream.
Above the vanishing faces
A phantom train flares on
With a voice that shakes the shadows,—
Diminishes, and is gone.
And I walk with the journeying throng
In such a solitude
As where a lonely ocean
Washes a lonely wood.
