Jefferson Butler Fletcher. Seven Sandwichmen on Broadway. Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. 1917. The Book of New York Verse

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

Seven Sandwichmen on Broadway

By Jefferson Butler Fletcher


SHUFFLING and shambling, woebegone, they pass,
Seven in single file, and seven as one,—
As if a spectrum of all woe the sun
Here cast through some bewitched prismatic glass.
From their stooped shoulders, back and fore, hang crass	5
High-coloured chromos of a stage mignonne
In tights, astride a grinning simpleton
Squat on all fours, and long-eared like an ass.
“Success! Success!” we read—yea, thy success
We read, O wanton among cities: vice	10
Saddled on folly, woe beneath sevenfold:
Woe of the lust of life, and the shameful price
Of life,—woe of the want, the weariness,—
Of fear, of hate,—of the thrice false weights of gold!