9 A Song in the City (1854)
Gerald Massey
“A Song in the City” by Gerald Massey is from his 1854 collection The Ballad Of Babe Christabel: with Other Lyrical Poems, 3rd ed., which is available in full on Google Books. The poem is in the public domain.
The editorial notes are available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Unless otherwise attributed, they were written by Dr. Kylee-Anne Hingston at the University of Saskatchewan.
A Song in the City
COINING the heart, brain, and sinew, to gold,
Till we sink in the dark, on the pauper’s dole,
Feeling for ever the flowerless mould,
Growing about the uncrownéd soul!
5
O, God! O God! must this evermore be
The lot of the Children of Poverty?
The Spring is calling from brae and bower,
In the twinkling sheen of the sunny hour,
Earth smiles in her golden green;
10
There’s music below, in the glistering leaves,
There’s music above, and heaven’s blue bosom heaves
The silvery clouds between;
The boughs of the woodland are nodding in play,
And wooingly beckon my spirit away—
15
I hear the dreamy hum
Of bees in the lime-tree, and birds on the spray;
And they, too, are calling my thinking away;
But I cannot—cannot come.
Visions of verdant and heart-cooling places
20
Will steal on my soul like a golden spring-rain,
Bringing the lost light of brave, vanisht faces;
Till all my life blossoms with beauty again.
But O, for a glimpse of the flower-laden Morning,
That makes the heart leap up, and knock at heaven’s door!
25
O for the green lane, the green field, the green wood,
To take in, by heartfuls, their greenness once more!
How I yearn to lie down in the lush-flower’d meadows,
And nestle in leaves, and the sleep of the shadows,
Where violets in the cool gloom are awaking,
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There, let my soul burst from its cavern of clay,
To float down the warm spring, away and away!
FOR I WAS NOT MADE MERELY FOR MONEY-MAKING.
At my wearisome task I oftentimes turn,
From my bride, and my monitress, Duty,
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Forgetting the strife, and the wrestle of life,
To talk with the spirit of beauty.
The multitude’s hum, and the chinking of gold,
Grow hush as the dying of day,
For on wings, pulsing music, with joy untold,
40
My heart is up, and away!
Glad as the bird in the tree-top chanting
Its anthem of Liberty;
With its heart in its musical gratitude panting,
And O, ’tis a bliss to be!
45
Once more to drink in the life-breathing air,
Lapt in luxurious flowers—
To recall again the pleasures that were
In Infancy’s innocent hours—
To wash the earth-stains and the dust from my soul,
50
In nature’s reviving tears, once more;
To feast at her banquet, and drink from her bowl
Rich dew, for the heart’s hot core.
Ah me! ah me! it is heavenly then,
And hints of the spirit-world, near alway,
55
Are stirring, and stirr’d, at my heart again,
Like leaves to the kiss of May:
It is but a dream, yet ’tis passing sweet,
And when from its spells my spirit is waking,
60
Dark is my heart, and the wild tears start;
FOR I WAS NOT MADE MERELY FOR MONEY-MAKING.
My soul leaneth out, to the whisperings
Of the mighty, the marvellous spirits of old;
And heaven-ward soareth to strengthen her[1] wings,
65
When Labour relapseth its earthly hold;
And breathless with awfullest beauty—it listens,
To catch the Night’s deep, starry mystery;
Or in mine eyes, dissolved, it glistens,
70
Big, for the moan of Humanity.
Much that is written within its chamber,
Much that is shrined in the mind’s living amber,
Much of this thought of mine,—
I fain would struggle and give to birth;
75
For I would not pass away from earth,
And make no sign!
I yearn to utter, what might live on,
In the world’s heart, when I am gone.
I would not plod on, like these slaves of gold,
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Who shut up their souls, in a dusky cave:
I would see the world better, and nobler-soul’d,
Ere I lay me down in my green turf-grave.
I may toil till my life is filled with dreariness,
Toil till my heart is a wreck in its weariness,
85
Toil for ever, for tear-steept bread,
Till I go down to the silent dead.
But, by this yearning, this hoping, this aching,
I WAS NOT MADE MERELY FOR MONEY-MAKING.
Work Cited
Massey, Gerald. “A Song in the City.” The Ballad Of Babe Christabel: with Other Lyrical Poems, 3rd ed., David Bogue, 1854, pp. 90–92. Google Books, www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Ballad_of_Babe_Christabel_with_Other/1FmBKoUS3-oC.
- Interestingly, her refers to the speaker’s soul leaning out and soaring. ↵
