page: 112
MANCHESTER BY NIGHT.
- O’ER this huge town, rife with intestine wars,
- Whence as from monstrous sacrificial shrines
- Pillars of smoke climb heavenward, Night inclines
- Black brows majestical with glimmering stars.
- Her dewy silence soothes life’s angry jars:
- And like a mother’s wan white face, who pines
- Above her children’s turbulent ways, so shines
- The moon athwart the narrow cloudy bars.
- Now toiling multitudes that hustling crush
- Each other in the fateful strife for breath
- And, hounded on by diverse hungers, rush
- Across the prostrate ones that groan beneath,
- Are swathed within the universal hush,
- As life exchanges semblances with death.
