Progress

　　by Osbert Sitwell

　　The city's heat is like a leaden pall-

　　Its lowered lamps glow in the midnight air

　　Like mammoth orange-moths that flit and flare

　　Through the dark tapestry of night. The tall

　　Black houses crush the creeping beggars down,

　　Who walk beneath and think of breezes cool,

　　Of silver bodies bathing in a pool;

　　Or trees that whisper in some far, small town

　　Whose quiet nursed them, when they thought that

　　Was merely metal, not a grave of mould

　　In which men bury all that's fine and fair.

　　When they could chase the jewelled butterfly

　　Through the green bracken-scented lanes or sigh

　　For all the future held so rich and rare;

　　When, though they knew it not, their baby cries

　　Were lovely as the jewelled butterflies.

　　The City

　　by Charles Hanson Towne

　　When, sick of all the sorrow and distress

　　That flourished in the City like foul weeds,

　　I sought blue rivers and green, opulent meads,

　　And leagues of unregarded loneliness

　　Whereon no foot of man had seemed to press,

　　I did not know how great had been my needs,

　　How wise the woodland’s gospels and her creeds,

　　How good her faith to one long comfortless.

　　But in the silence came a Voice to me;

　　In every wind it murmured, and I knew

　　It would not cease though far my heart might roam.

　　It called me in the sunrise and the dew,

　　At noon and twilight, sadly, hungrily,

　　The jealous City, whispering always-“Home!” Poems - Town and Country