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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Witter Bynner

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

One of the Crowd

Witter Bynner

OH I longed, when I went in the woods today,

To see the fauns come out and play,

To see a satyr try to seize

A dryad’s waist—and bark his knees,

To see a river-nymph waylay

And shock him with a dash of spray!—

And I teased, like a child, by brooks and trees:

“Come back again! We need you! Please!

Come back and teach us how to play!”

But nowhere in the woods were they.

I found, when I went in the town today,

A thousand people on their way

To offices and factories—

And never a single soul at ease;

And how could I help but sigh and say:

“What can it profit them, how can it pay

To strain the eye with rivalries

Until the dark is all it sees?—

Or to manage, more than others may,

To store the wasted gain away?”

But one of the crowd looked up today,

With pointed brows. I heard him say:

“Out of the meadows and rivers and trees

We fauns and many companies

Of nymphs have come. And we are these,

These people, each upon his way,

Looking for work, working for pay—

And paying all our energies

To earn true love … For, seeming gay,

“Once we were sad,” I heard him say.