She stood at the ticket-seller’s
Serenely removing her glove,
While hundreds of strugglers and yellers,
And some that were good at
a shove,
Were clustered behind her
like bats in
a cave and unwilling
to speak their love.
At night she still stood at that window
Endeavoring her money to reach;
The crowds right and left, how they sinned—O,
How dreadfully sinned in their
speech!
Ten miles either way they
extended
their lines, the
historians teach.
She stands there to-day—legislation
Has failed to remove her.
The trains
No longer pull up at that station;
And over the ghastly remains
Of the army that waited and
died of
old age fall the
snows and the rains.
THE LORD’S PRAYER ON A COIN.
Upon this quarter-eagle’s leveled
face,
The Lord’s Prayer, legibly inscribed,
I trace.
“Our Father which”—the
pronoun there is funny,
And shows the scribe to have addressed
the money—
“Which art in Heaven”—an
error this, no doubt:
The preposition should be stricken out.
Needless to quote; I only have designed
To praise the frankness of the pious mind
Which thought it natural and right to
join,
With rare significancy, prayer and coin.
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