Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RUBICAM ROAD, by THOMAS AUGUSTINE DALY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RUBICAM ROAD, by                    
First Line: Where, in all the wide world, is the loveliest street?
Last Line: Into rubicam road.
Alternate Author Name(s): Daly, T. A.
Subject(s): Roads; Paths; Trails


WHERE, in all the wide world, is the loveliest street?
There are millions of roads trod by billions of feet,
And the question, if asked of each traveler you meet,
Will produce a reply of a different mode.
There are many in this unregenerate day
Who will speak for "Fifth avenue," aye, or
"Broadway,"
But the fortunate few who are wiser will say:
"It is Rubicam Road!"

O! then sneer, if you will, and make game of our claim;
Aye! and have your rude fling at the old-fashioned name
And the rural aroma that clings to the same.
Yet no beauty so rare ever glimmered and glowed
From the lamps of the tall-towered towns of the world,

Upon streets where humanity jostled and swirled,
As the beauty that's daily and nightly unfurled
Over Rubicam Road.

Here's a street of the city, yet skirting a wood
Where the town's brazen clamors but seldom intrude;
"Rus in urbe," indeed with all graces imbued
That old Horace himself might have shrined in an ode!
For the shadows are coolest, the sun is most bright,
The queen moon and the stars shed the kind-liest light,
And the peace is the sweetest that droppeth at night
Over Rubicam Road.

You will never believe it, and yet it is true!
I can prove it to you, sir -- and you, sir -- and you!
You have only to go there and do as I do.
You have simply to go and take up your abode --
Be the latter as humble and plain as it may --
Where Her kiss in the morning that speeds you away
Will be drawing you back, at the close of the day,
Into Rubicam Road.





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