But we wonder whether he had himself heard the rhythm of the first three lines when we next read—
"O still you laugh and walk
And sing and frankly talk."
A doubt arises even over the second three lines—the fatal influence of a trick of facile rhyming seems already to tame in them the soaring stroke—but with this last couplet we are waddling on ground.
"What is it the breeze says
In London streets to-day
Unto the troubled trees
Whose shadows strew the way,
Whose leaves are all a-flutter?
'You are wild!' the rascal cries.
The green tree beats its wings
And fills the air with sighs.
'Wild! wild!' the rascal sings.
But your feet are in the gutter!
Men pass beneath the trees
Walking the pavement grey,
They hear the whisperings tease
And at the word he utters
Their hearts are green and gay.
Then like the gay, green trees,
They beat proud wings to fly,
But like the fluttering trees,
Their footprints mark the gutters
Until the beggars die."
This poem has great beauty of structure; it follows an inevitable course from outstart to the happy last line. Yet the first line for the sake of a pat rhyme is contorted and rendered ambiguous to the ear and really runs—
"What is it says the breeze"—
