Arthur Henry Adams

King Street

A morn, a sallow lamp-lit morn,
A dawn that never breaks to day!
Old, old the faces, and forlorn;
The hearts look out, so seared, so grey!
It is as if some upturned stone
Had flung to light a vermin rout —
For things misfeatured, souls unknown,
Stagger in blind amaze about.
Along their gleaming lines of light
The charging trams go, head to ground;
Out from the drifting pathways, white
The faces flash — like faces drowned!
And there with painted features drear,
And eyes whose pathos still is sweet,
The hunted hunters prowl and peer —
Their lair the long, slow-surging street.