Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways, Between the rivers and the illumined sky Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze. They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare Beyond the hilltops in the evening air How bright the cressets at her portals blaze. On the pure fronts Defeat ere many a day Falls like the soot and dirt on city-snow; There hopes deferred lie sunk in piteous seams. Her paths are disillusion and decay, With ruins piled and unapparent woe, The graves of Beauty and the wreck of dreams. Sonnet III There was a youth around whose early way White angels hung in converse and sweet choir, Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, -- In cloud and far horizon to desire. His life was nursed in beauty, like the stream Born of clear showers and the mountain dew, Close under snow-clad summits where they gleam Forever pure against heaven's orient blue. Within the city's shades he walked at last. Faint and more faint in sad recessional Down the dim corridors of Time outworn, A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past, A hymn of glories fled beyond recall With the lost heights and splendor of life's morn. Sonnet IV Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town's tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame: Each night the whistles in the bay, the same Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars: For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars Burnt like his youth with but a sickly flame. Up to his attic came the city cries -- The throes with which her iron sinews heave -- And yet forever behind prison doors Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes The light that hangs on desert hills at eve And tints the sea on solitary shores. . . . Sonnet V A tide of beauty with returning May Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay. Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe; The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound; And through the streets, like veins when they abound, The lust for pleasure throbs itself away. Here let me live, here let me still pursue Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, -- Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of. Sonnet VI