Women have doffed their tinselled gowns and stand
Huddled together idly in the wings,
Their weary eyes sad with unuttered things.
Somewhere in solemn tones a tenor sings,
His voice reverberant thro' the painted land.
Tawdry and dull the scenery hangs in lines,
Meadows and brooks and clustered grotesque flowers,
Castles and thrones and walls and colored bowers,
Dangling in creases where the spotlight shines.
Aloft is a labyrinth of winding stairs
Thro' lonely halls unlit and serpentine,
To the dressing rooms, where powdered girls on chairs
Await their turn or indolently lean
Half-naked at their mirrors of rough board.
The lights are feverish, and behind each scene,
Within dark pits of shadow, chests are stored,
Odd bits of property piled here and there
Beneath the iron girders bleak and bare.

Beyond, the house looms like a clouded sea
Immovable and hushed to the round dome,
Watching the scene with its bright pageantry,
While in the eaves the men and women roam
Aimless and tired in their great wilderness

Of silent shapes and shadows. Flown the mirth
And glittering beauty; garish in undress,
The stage is desolate, a shoddy earth—
Merely place of dreary emptiness.

The curtain drops. . . . A blinding rush of light,
Hundreds of hurrying figures black and white—
A rush of footsteps—then the sudden fall
Of interminable darkness over all.