Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON GRACE CHURCH CORNER, by WILLIAM ROSE BENET


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON GRACE CHURCH CORNER, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Beneath the stone-flowered, lozenged steeple
Last Line: A white dream cleaves the sky!
Subject(s): Bells; Broadway, New York City; Churches; Streets; Travel; Cathedrals; Avenues; Journeys; Trips


Beneath the stone-flowered, lozenged steeple
In the close-shuttered tower
Mellow-tongued church-bells charm the people
Thronging the hot noon hour.

Above the trucks and clanging cars,
Ambulance, van, and dray,
They chime their slow and certain bars
Ringing our wrongs away.

Here, down at Tenth and Broadway, loom
Dull walls. But liquid notes
Still dream and rhyme and roam and boom
From the bells' iron throats.

And Broadway stretches ever South,
Steep-cliffed, with crawling crowds;
The white dream-tower that blocks its mouth
Climbing against the clouds.

And Thought still stretches like the street
'Twixt obdurate walls and high;
Till, where drear fact and mystery meet,
A white Dream cleaves the sky!





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