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The poem
Main Street by Joyce Kilmer
I like to
look at the blossomy track of the moon upon the sea,
But it isn't half so fine a sight as Main Street
used to be
When it all was covered over with a couple of feet
of snow,
And over the crisp and radiant road the ringing
sleighs would go.
Now, Main Street bordered with autumn leaves, it was
a pleasant thing,
And its gutters were gay with dandelions early in
the Spring;
I like to think of it white with frost or dusty in
the heat,
Because I think it is humaner than any other street.
A city street that is busy and wide is ground by a
thousand wheels,
And a burden of traffic on its breast is all it ever
feels:
It is dully conscious of weight and speed and of
work that never ends,
But it cannot be human like Main Street, and
recognise its friends.
There were only about a hundred teams on Main Street
in a day,
And twenty or thirty people, I guess, and some
children out to play.
And there wasn't a wagon or buggy, or a man or a
girl or a boy
That Main Street didn't remember, and somehow seem
to enjoy.
The truck and the motor and trolley car and the
elevated train
They make the weary city street reverberate with
pain:
But there is yet an echo left deep down within my
heart
Of the music the Main Street cobblestones made
beneath a butcher's cart.
God be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across
the sky,
That's the path that my feet would tread whenever I
have to die.
Some folks call it a Silver Sword, and some a Pearly
Crown,
But the only thing I think it is, is Main Street,
Heaventown. |
