Down-gazing, I behold, Miraculous by night, A city all of gold. Here, there, and everywhere, In myriad fashion fair, A mystery untold Of Light! Not royal Babylon, Nor Tyre, nor Rome the great— In the all-powerful state Her wisdom and her armed legions won— Was so illuminate As the strange world which, awed, I look upon. With it compared, the ancient glories fail, And, in the glow it doth irradiate, The planets of the firmament grow pale! Night, birth-fellow to Chaos, never wore A robe so gemmed before. The splendour streams In lines and jets and scintillating gleams From tower and spire and campanile bright, And palaces of light. How beautiful is this Unmatched Cosmopolis!— City of wealth and want, Of pitiless extremes, Selfish ambitions, pure aspiring dreams; Whose miseries, remembered, daunt The bravest spirit hope hath cheered— This city loved and hated, honoured, feared: This Titan City, bold to dare: This wounded Might That, dreading darkness, still conceals its care And hides its gaping hurt 'neath veils of light! Oh, I have looked on Venice when the moon Silvered each dark lagoon, And have in dreams beheld her Clothed in resplendent pride, The Adriatic's bride! Naples I, too, have seen— An even lovelier Queen— And thought that nothing in the world excelled her— Nay marvelled, as at close of day I gazed across her opalescent bay And saw Vesuvius burn on high Against the soft Italian sky, That anything on earth could wear A charm so past compare! Yet, O Manhattan! Glowing now Against the sombre night, Thine opulence and squalor hid from sight, Never was aught more beautiful than thou Dost in thy calm appear— So glorified and so transfigured here— Since the Eternal, to creation stirred, Breathed from His awful lips the mystic word: @3Let there be Light!@1 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND by HENRY FIELDING THE VOICE by WILFRID WILSON GIBSON SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE: 9. AT THE ALTAR-RAIL by THOMAS HARDY EMBLEMS OF LOVE: 4. THE TIMOROUS ADVENTURER by PHILIP AYRES |