| THE drug clerk stands behind the counter | |
| Young and dapper and debonair.... | |
| |
| Before him burn the great unwinking lights | |
| The hectic stars of city nights, | |
| Red as hell's pit, green as a mermaid's hair. | 5 |
| A queer half-acrid smell is in the air. | |
| Behind him on the shelves in ordered rows | |
| With strange, abbreviated names | |
| Dwell half the facts of life. That young man knows, | |
| Bottled and boxed and powdered here, | 10 |
| Dumb tragedies, deceptions, secret shames, | |
| And comedy and fear. | |
| |
| Sleep slumbers here, like a great quiet sea | |
| Shrunk to this bottle's compass; sleep that brings | |
| Sweet respite from the teeth of pain | 15 |
| To those poor tossing things | |
| That the white nurses watch so thoughtfully. | |
| And here again | |
| Dwell the shy souls of Maytime flowers | |
| That shall make sweeter still those poignant hours | 20 |
| When wide-eyed youth looks on the face of love. | |
| And, for those others who have found too late | |
| The bitter fruits thereof, | |
| Here are cosmetics, powders, paints,—the arts | |
| That hunted women use to hunt again | 25 |
| With scented flesh for bait. | |
| And here is comfort for the hearts | |
| Of sucking babes in their first teething pain. | |
| Here dwells the substance of huge fervid dreams, | |
| Fantastic, many-colored, shot with gleams | 30 |
| Of ecstasy and madness, that shall come | |
| To some pale, twitching sleeper in a bunk. | |
| And here is courage, cheaply bought | |
| To cure a blue sick funk, | |
| And dearly paid for in the final sum. | 35 |
| Here in this powdered fly is caught | |
| Desire more ravishing than Tarquin's.... | |
| And at last | |
| When the one weary hope is past | |
| Here is the sole escape, | 40 |
| The little postern in the house of breath | |
| Where pallid fugitives keep tryst with death. | |
| |
| All this the drug clerk knows and there he stands, | |
| Young and dapper and debonair.... | |
| He rests a pair of slender hands, | 45 |
| Much manicured, upon the counter there | |
| And speaks: "No, we don't carry no pomade, | |
| We only cater to the high-class trade." | |
