| |
| ON the middle arch of the bridge I stood | |
| And mused, as the twilight failed;— | |
| The bridge that swings and sings ’twixt tide and sky | |
| Like a harp that the sea-winds sweep;— | |
| Night flooded in from the bay | 5 |
| With billow on billow of shadow and beauty, | |
| Wave upon wave of illusion and dusk, | |
| And before me apparelled in splendor, | |
| Banded with loops of light, | |
| Clothed on with purple and magic, | 10 |
| Rose the tall towers of Manhattan, | |
| Wonderful under the stars. | |
| |
| Whence has this miracle sprung | |
| To challenge the skies? | |
| From the plinth of this girdled island, | 15 |
| Guarded by sentinel waters, | |
| How has this glory arisen? | |
| Whence is the faith, and what is the creed, that has dowered | |
| The dumb brute rock and the sullen iron | |
| With a beauty so bold and vital, | 20 |
| A grace so vivid and real? | |
| Whence the strong wings of this lyric that soars like a song in stone? | |
| |
| For the builders builded in blindness; | |
| Little they thought of the ultimate | |
| Uses of beauty! | 25 |
| Little they kenned and nothing they recked of the raptures | |
| Of conscious and masterful art; | |
| They builded blinder than they who raised | |
| The naïvely blasphemous challenge of Babel; | |
| For they wrought in the sordid humor | 30 |
| Of greed, and the lust of power; | |
| They wrought in the heat of the bitter | |
| Battle for gold; | |
| And some of them ground men’s lives to mortar, | |
| Taking the conqueror’s toll, | 35 |
| From the veins of the driven millions; | |
| Of curses and tears they builded, | |
| Cruelty and crime and sorrow— | |
| And behold! by a baffling magic | |
| The work of their hands transmuted | 40 |
| To temples and towers that are crowned | |
| With a glamour transcendent | |
| That lifts up the heart like the smile of a god! | |
| |
| The dust is the dust, and forever | |
| Receiveth its own; | 45 |
| But the dreams of a man or a people | |
| Forever survive; | |
| These builders, their crimes and their curses, | |
| Their greed and their sordid endeavor, | |
| Lie in the dust, | 50 |
| Dead in the dust. | |
| But the vision, the dream, and the glory | |
| Remain: | |
| |
| Triumphantly over all | |
| Rises the secret hope, | 55 |
| Rises the baffled illusion, | |
| Rises the broken dream | |
| That hid in the heart of the conquered, | |
| That dwelt in the conqueror’s breast; | |
| By the side of each man as he labored, | 60 |
| Unseen and unknown, | |
| Labored his dream; | |
| Now, eminent, fronting the morning, | |
| Mysterious, clothed with the night, | |
| Rises the crushed aspiration, | 65 |
| The unconscious and scarcely articulate prayer, | |
| Rises the faith forgotten, | |
| Triumphs the spurned ideal, | |
| Rises the god denied, | |
| Conquers the creed betrayed, | 70 |
| Rises the baffled spirit | |
| Flowering in visible durable marvel of stone and of steel, | |
| Miraculous under the heavens, | |
| Wonderful under the stars. | |
| |
| Nay, mock at the gods if you will, | 75 |
| Even forget their existence, | |
| But always they labor in secret | |
| To bring to a sudden and golden achievement | |
| Their subtle intentions; | |
| And lo! from the dung a lily! | 80 |
| A temple out of the clay! | |
| A city out of the rabble! | |
| And lo! the strong hands of Manhattan, | |
| Mightily lifted up | |
| To grasp at the gold of the sunset | 85 |
| For a crown for her head! | |
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