| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | Nevertheless | | By Clifford Franklin Gessler |
| | From “The Villager”
INASMUCH as I love you | |
| And shall know no peace more unless I am near you, | |
| Though you are a flame of will | |
| Proud and variable as you are beautiful and dear— | |
| Nevertheless I will go your way, | 5 |
| Since you will not go mine. | |
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| Therefore, although the cool roads of my village | |
| Are more pleasant to me than the pavements of your city; | |
| Although its dim streets are more kindly than your glaring arcs; | |
| Though the unhurried voices of my townspeople | 10 |
| Are more friendly music in my ears than the screamings | |
| And glib chatter of your city-dwellers: | |
| Nevertheless I will go down with you into the city | |
| And bruise my heart upon its bricks; | |
| Become brother to its shrieking “elevated” | 15 |
| And learn to hurry away my days in this brief world | |
| Among the grimy roofs that soil the clean young sunshine; | |
| Thinking only at long whiles, in summer dusks, | |
| Of hushed paths where hurrying feet have never trodden, | |
| Of cool lanes white in the splendor of the rising moon. | 20 | | | |
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