O great city of millions scrambling backwards and forwards!—O toiling careworn millions of the earth!

Pursuing ever shadows shadows, laboring for that which seems to give so little return:

With tears tears, and short-lived laughter, and the black toad sitting ever in the heart.

* * * * *

O wanderers returning ever on your tracks—innumerable paths from darkness to darkness! O specks across the pathway of the moon!

You by the mouth of the Kolima regarding with pale face the great star-spangled sky—the glory all crossed and blotched with pain;

You hurrying on in the foggy yellow dawn to the dressmaker’s gas-reeking den—or in the filthy back slum dreaming of your childhood and the banks of primroses;

You lying anxious at night, weary and broken with business cares ever closing upon you—you prowling by day the crowded footways:

Come, sit down now at your ease and forget all. Sleep, weary children, and dream of peace and quiet.

Far have you yet to go, but there is no need to hurry;

What seems the end of your journey now, may-be it is only the beginning; what terrifies you so in prospect perhaps after all you will pass and hardly be aware.

You with black bag hastening to catch the train, hasten no more: the deed which you want—which shall declare you free—you will find not at your office;

Train disappearing into the tunnel, delude the passengers no more with the promise of reaching their destinations;

Cease prowling the streets, old man! I have seen what you are searching for: it is safe, and the reward is great—but now rest for a moment.

And you, tight-gloved and booted and with penciled eyes, be not so choice about your gloves and boots and where you will be seated—for while you are busy with all these things your lover waits solitary for you.

Lone mother in the dreary little shop, tired child on the way to paradise—now to thy boy lying dead upstairs.

Does the path seem long?—rest here and let us beguile a few moments:

Rest here in mortal form thou that I see enveloped:

Child of sin and sorrow and suffering rest close here.