The slow-flowing channels where life chafes against the
walls — each drop strange isolate, desolate. Nor one drop knowing another. The stoney streets ablaze with lights; briUiant, hopeful,
gay, childish, barbaric — beautiful as light is ever
beautiful — crude, tinseled, chimerical. The streets sun-gilt, garish and rotten; scintillant or
sombre ; Where many seek death.
The great docks which the waters lick, sleepily ; The black steamers lazily lying along the docks, Dreaming of conquered tempests ;
Their hollow entrails gorged with the spoil of many ports. They lie in wait for the plunder of the world. Here slim-sparred vessels cease from waving their masts To and fro against the sky, and rest by the wharves. Little tugs puff fussily about.
And donkey-engines cough noisily, intermittently. Swinging the derricks to and fro, lading and unlading. Longshoremen, in faded flannel shirts, open at the breast, And sleeves rolled up, run back and forth With their trucks, breathless. How encouraging is their strength when Justice shall
come. And the silken play of their muscles, exquisite, wonderful, Powerful to accomplish when Justice shall be foreman of
the world. They are skilled athletes in the arena of Industry, But they earn not the leisure of athletes. They are the ranks of soldiers in a battle. If one stumbles
they pass over him ; if one be wounded he is lost. They receive not the care of soldiers.
The long freight-trains rumble throughout the night And in the early morning, with a sudden great crash. Stop beside the warehouse. Their husbands, the leviathan engines, Trembling with power, leave them,
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