A Crowded Trolley Car

By Elinor Wylie 1885–1928 Elinor Wylie

The rain’s cold grains are silver-gray

Sharp as golden sands,

A bell is clanging, people sway

Hanging by their hands.

Supple hands, or gnarled and stiff,

Snatch and catch and grope;

That face is yellow-pale, as if

The fellow swung from rope.

Dull like pebbles, sharp like knives,

Glances strike and glare,

Fingers tangle, Bluebeard’s wives

Dangle by the hair.

Orchard of the strangest fruits

Hanging from the skies;

Brothers, yet insensate brutes

Who fear each others’ eyes.

One man stands as free men stand

As if his soul might be

Brave, unbroken; see his hand

Nailed to an oaken tree.

Biography

Extravagantly praised in her lifetime, the poet and novelist Elinor Wylie suffered a posthumous reversal in her reputation but has experienced something of a revival of interest among feminist critics since the 1980s.

Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey to a socially prominent family, and grew up in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. As the daughter of a lawyer who later became solicitor general of the United . . .

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