| |
| PAST the Red Box at Vesey Street | |
| Swing two strong tides of hurrying feet, | |
| And up and down and all the day | |
| Rises a sullen roar, to say | |
| The Bowery has met Broadway. | 5 |
| And where the confluent current brawls | |
| Stands, fair and dear and old, St. Paul’s, | |
| Through her grand window looking down | |
| Upon the fever of the town; | |
| Rearing her shrine of patriot pride | 10 |
| Above that hungry human-tide | |
| Mad with the lust of sordid gain, | |
| Wild for the things that God holds vain; | |
| Blind, selfish, cruel—Stay there! out | |
| A man is turning from the rout, | 15 |
| And stops to drop a folded sheet | |
| In the Red Box at Vesey Street. | |
| On goes he to the money-mart, | |
| A broker, shrewd and tricky-smart; | |
| But in the space you saw him stand, | 20 |
| He reached and grasped a brother’s hand: | |
| And some poor bed-rid wretch will find | |
| Bed-life a little less unkind | |
| For that man’s stopping. They who pass | |
| Under St. Paul’s broad roseate glass | 25 |
| Have but to reach their hands to gain | |
| The pitiful world of prisoned pain. | |
| The hospital’s poor captive lies | |
| Waiting the day with weary eyes, | |
| Waiting the day, to hear again | 30 |
| News of the outer world of men, | |
| Brought to him in a crumpled sheet | |
| From the Red Box at Vesey Street. | |
| |
| For the Red Box at Vesey Street | |
| Was made because men’s hearts must beat; | 35 |
| Because the humblest kindly thought | |
| May do what wealth has never bought. | |
| That journal in your hand you hold | |
| To you already has grown old,— | |
| Stale, dull, a thing to throw away,— | 40 |
| Yet since the earliest gleam of day | |
| Men in a score of hospitals | |
| Have lain and watched the whitewashed walls; | |
| Waiting the hour that brings more near | |
| The Life so infinitely dear— | 45 |
| The Life of trouble, toil, and strife, | |
| Hard, if you will—but Life, Life, Life! | |
| Tell them, O friend! that life is sweet | |
| Through the Red Box at Vesey Street. | |
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