Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MIRAGE, by FRANK ERNEST HILL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MIRAGE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There is a city islanded in light
Last Line: Clear to the eyes, lost to the feet of men.
Subject(s): Cities; Mirages; Urban Life


There is a city islanded in light:
Coppery green and windowed wall of white
And plumes of steam uplifted pale and whist
Over a bay of water like blue mist.
Men must walk proudly where the sunlight falls
Across the soaring beauty of those walls;
Words must be music worthy of the dreaming
That summoned dross, and shaped, and left it gleaming
Farther from earth and sea than from the sun.
Toil must be promise there of things undone
Shining in things fulfilled, and love and sleep
Are sweeter in that city, and more deep.

Go toward the light. There is a gloom that rings
With the eternal war of men and things.
Go toward the silence. There is thunder poured
Dark through the canyon darkness. Towers have soared
To suckle shadows, trap the noise of men,
Tangle their stolen lightning in a pen.
Crowds at the corners herd upon their heels
To watch and wait upon a march of wheels;
Jangling their tided thousands press to feed
Long caverns of pale light and stuttering speed
Where living men are worms. Their streets are rooms
Troughed, rooflless, with a wreckage in their glooms
Lifting its web to shake with sky-flung trains
The ghastliness of endless window-panes.

You will not find the shiinning city in
These grooves of shadow and of gusty din.
Only at times high windows snare the light,
Smoke curls against blue sky to billowing white,
Tall spires are golden through a ghostly rain,
Roofs in the distance glisten green again.
A city shines beyond the city then,
Clear to the eyes, lost to the feet of men.





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