Lights

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <H1> Lights</H1> <p id="id00246" style="margin-top: 2em">  When we come home at night and close the door,<br/> Standing together in the shadowy room,<br/> Safe in our own love and the gentle gloom,<br/> Glad of familiar wall and chair and floor,<br/></p> <p id="id00247">  Glad to leave far below the clanging city;<br/> Looking far downward to the glaring street<br/> Gaudy with light, yet tired with many feet,<br/> In both of us wells up a wordless pity;<br/></p> <p id="id00248">  Men have tried hard to put away the dark;<br/> A million lighted windows brilliantly<br/> Inlay with squares of gold the winter night,<br/> But to us standing here there comes the stark<br/> Sense of the lives behind each yellow light,<br/> And not one wholly joyous, proud, or free.<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />