noon
And whoso should think that that sordid commercial city , given up to all the prose of trade day by day , is not a poet at heart , has never seen her strange smile at evening when the shops are shut , and the offices empty , and the men who know her not gone home . For then across the crowded roofs softly comes a strange sweetness , and deep down among the gloomy wynds of deserted warehouses , still as temples , sudden fairies of sunset dance and dazzle , and touch the grimy walls with soft hands . In lonely back rooms , full of desks and dust , haunted lights of evening stand like splendid apparitions ; and sometimes , if you lingered at the top of High Street , beneath the dark old church , and the moon was out on the left of the steeple and the sunset dying on the right , dying beyond the tangled masts and fading from the river , you would forget you were a city clerk , and you would wonder why the world was so beautiful , why the moon was made of pearl , and what it was that called to you out of yonder golden sea ; and your heart would fill with a strange gladness , and you would call back to those unearthly voices , `` I am yours , yours , all yours ! '' Thus would this town of bales and merchants , of office-desks and stools , make poets at evening that she might stone them at noon . For , of course , she would have forgotten it all in the morning ; and it were well not to remind her with your dreaming eyes of her last night 's softness . She will look back at you with stony misunderstanding , and her new lover Reality will sharply box your ears . It is no use reminding the Exchange that it looked like a scene from Romeo and Juliet in the moonlight .