Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BROAD STREET, by AUGUSTUS WATTERS First Line: When lilacs bloom in urban bowers Last Line: What port the later pilgrims reach. Subject(s): New Jersey; Streets; Avenues | ||||||||
When lilacs bloom in urban bowers, Sweet harbingers of summer hours, And cherry-blossoms lightly fall Like snowflakes by the garden wall; When robins hide in apple-trees, And pansies nod in every breeze, And like cathedrals, tall and grand, Our hoary elms majestic stand, While underneath the current flows Of human joys and human woes, Then seems the street a mighty stream On which we mortals drift and dream. Here toiled the Fathers in the fields, Where earth her truest treasure yields, And here the Sons, with reverent eyes, Behold a royal harvest rise. Yet ever, 'neath the starry cope, The radiant barges Love and Hope Move side by side with Grief and Care, And all the flotsam of Despair. In vain the pilots seek to force Their way against the current's course, And where they're bound, or whence they came, Nor sage, nor bard can ever name. And none of all the fleets that glide Along the weird and heaving tide Turn back their prows or ever teach What Port the later Pilgrims reach. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHINATOWN BLUES by CLARENCE MAJOR KEEP DRIVING by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE DEEP IN EUROPE by TOMAS TRANSTROMER IN THE STREETS by LOUIS UNTERMEYER EVENING SONG ON OUR STREET by DAVID WAGONER ANGLOSAXON STREET by EARL (EARLE) BIRNEY SONNET: 24. THE STREET by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL A STEP AWAY FROM THEM by FRANK O'HARA (1926-1966) |
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