Wherever men are gathered, all the air Is charged with human feeling, human thought;Each shout and cry and laugh, each curse and prayer, Are into its vibrations surely wrought;Unspoken passion, wordless meditation, 5Are breathed into it with our respiration It is with our life fraught and overfraught.
So that no man there breathes earth's ****** breath, As if alone on mountains or wide seas;But nourishes warm life or hastens death10With joys and sorrows, health and foul disease, Wisdom and folly, good and evil labours, Incessant of his multitudinous neighbors;He in his turn affecting all of these.
That City's atmosphere is dark and dense, 15Although not many exiles wander there, With many a potent evil influence, Each adding poison to the poisoned air;Infections of unutterable sadness, Infections of incalculable madness, 20Infections of incurable despair.
