Ah! what bright, untold romances
Linger in the radiant glances

Of the beauties of Broadway!

All the fairer, that so fleeting
Is the momentary meeting,

That our footsteps may not stay;
While, each passing form replacing,
Swift the waves of life are chasing
Down the channels of Broadway!

Motley as the masqueraders
Are the jostling promenaders,
In their varied, strange display;
Here an instant, only, blending,
Whither are their footsteps tending
As they hasten through Broadway ?

Some to garrets and to cellars,
Crowded with unhappy dwellers;
Some to mansions, rich and gay,
Where the evening's mirth and pleasure
Shall be fuller, in their measure,
Than the turmoil of Broadway!

Yet were once our mortal vision
Blest with quicker intuition,

We should shudder with dismay
To behold what shapes are haunting
Some, who seem most gayly flaunting
On the sidewalks of Broadway!

For, beside the beggar cheerless,
And the maiden gay and fearless,

And the old man worn and gray,
Swift and viewless, waiting never,
Still the Fates are gliding ever,

Stern and silent, through Broadway!

William Allen Butler.

Is

THE BOWLING GREEN.

this the Bowling Green? I should not know it, So disarrayed, defaced, and gone to seed,

Like some un-Pegasused and prosy poet,

Whose Helicon is now the bowl and weed; Its Green, if grass, does not precisely show it, So changed to worse from that once lovely mead.

Not Time has done it only, Desecration

Has with corrosive finger touched the place;

The iron fence, its once proud decoration,

The street, the mansions round, share the disgrace, — Now but the stepping-stone of every nation,

The point of fusion for the human race.

The houses once, long since, in evening's glory
Shone with a tranquil beauty; and on stoops
Maidens would listen while the old, old story
Beguiled the twilight; and broad-skirted groups
Displayed their sabres moderately gory,

Displacing with good Dutch the Indians' whoops.

And in my own day, later, I remember

Those pleasant houses and their pleasant hosts,
Where gleamed like topaz in the dying ember
The old Madeira (then we drank to toasts).
Ah me! that June of life is now December,
And all those smiling figures are but ghosts.

Yon dingy alien, limping from his steamer;
The colorless, abandoned look of all;
The broken flags, the fountain's silvery tremor;
The homes for aye disprivacied, and the wall
Cuirassed in gilded sign-boards, pain the dreamer,
And all his blissful memories appall.

Ah! 't was a dear old town, that lost Manhattan,

With its green shores, whose islands still had trees; And round them gleamed the sun-touched bay like satin, When the sun sank, and shut its wings the breeze. Oh! why was it obliged to grow and fatten ? Those modest days in worth outvalued these.

The visitor, I may say without flattery,

Finds few, if any, ports to match the view (When the wind 's up, the walk is slightly spattery) Of bustling, white-winged craft and laughing blue, Which fixes him enchanted on the Battery, So full of life, forever fresh and new.

If, as a boy I did, I make my haunt in

Dear Castle Garden, soon I find a check
In two policemen, who, my courage daunting,
Stand sentinels beside that piteous wreck,

And point to signs; I read, Für Emigranten,
And just beyond I see an emptying deck.

In the far future, haply, the town completed,

That foreign wave no more shall strike the shore, And the boys then shall frolic there as we did, And maidens flower-like bloom beside the door, And happy people shall behold repeated

Such a Manhattan as we loved of yore.

Thomas Gold Appleton.

ON THE PIER.

OWN at the end of the long dark street,

DOWN

Years, years ago,

I sat with my sweetheart on the pier,

Watching the river flow.

The moon was climbing the sky that night,

White as the winter's snow:

We kissed in its light, and swore to be true,

But that was years ago!

Once more I walk in the dark old street,

Wearily to and fro:

But I sit no more on the desolate pier

Watching the river flow.

Richard Henry Stoddard.