| Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917. | | | | The India Wharf (abridged) | | By Sara Teasdale |
| | | HERE in the velvet stillness | |
| The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon, | |
| Sleeping in starlight … | |
| |
| A year ago we walked in the jangling city | |
| Together … forgetful. | 5 |
| One by one we crossed the avenues, | |
| Rivers of light, roaring in tumult, | |
| And came to the narrow, knotted streets. | |
| Through the tense crowd | |
| We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder, | 10 |
| Unconscious of our motion. | |
| Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes | |
| Passed us and passed. | |
| Lights and foreign words and foreign faces, | |
| I forgot them all; | 15 |
| I only felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow, | |
| Sure and elated. | |
| |
| That was the gift you gave me … | |
| |
| The streets grew still more tangled, | |
| And led us at last to water black and glossy, | 20 |
| Flecked here and there with lights, faint and far off. | |
| There on a shabby building was a sign | |
| “The India Wharf” … and we turned back. | |
| |
| I always felt we could have taken ship | |
| And crossed the bright green seas | 25 |
| To dreaming cities set on sacred streams | |
| And palaces | |
| Of ivory and scarlet. | | | | |
|
|
