Sara Teasdale — The India Wharf

    HERE in the velvet stillness     The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon,     Sleeping in starlight. . . .     A year ago we walked in the jangling city     Together . . . . forgetful.     One by one we crossed the avenues,     Rivers of light, roaring in tumult,     And came to the narrow, knotted streets.     Thru the tense crowd     We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder,     Unconscious of our motion.     Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes     Passed us and passed.     Lights and foreign words and foreign faces,     I forgot them all;     I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow,     Sure and elated. That was the gift you gave me. . . .     The streets grew still more tangled,     And led at last to water black and glossy,     Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off.     There on a shabby building was a sign     "The India Wharf " . . . and we turned back.     I always felt we could have taken ship     And crossed the bright green seas     To dreaming cities set on sacred streams     And palaces     Of ivory and scarlet.