| Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917. | | | | A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign | | By Vachel Lindsay |
| | | I LOOK on the specious electrical light | |
| Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, | |
| Wickedly red or malignantly green | |
| Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. | |
| Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, | 5 |
| The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, | |
| By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, | |
| Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl, | |
| By maggoty motions in sickening line | |
| Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine, | 10 |
| While there far above the steep cliffs of the street | |
| The stars sing a message elusive and sweet. | |
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| Now man cannot rest in his pleasure and toil | |
| His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil | |
| Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range, | 15 |
| Leads on to the marvellous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE. | |
| Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies, | |
| As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise, | |
| And we shall be lifted, rejoicing by night, | |
| Till we join with the planets who choir their delight. | 20 |
| The signs in the streets and the signs in the skies | |
| Shall make a new Zodiac, guiding the wise, | |
| And Broadway make one with that marvellous stair | |
| That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer. | | | | |
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