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| LET not our town be large—remembering | |
| That little Athens was the Muses’ home; | |
| That Oxford rules the heart of London still, | |
| That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome. | |
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| Record it for the grandson of your son— | 5 |
| A city is not builded in a day: | |
| Our little town cannot complete her soul | |
| Till countless generations pass away. | |
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| Now let each child be joined as to a church | |
| To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained; | 10 |
| Let every street be made a reverent aisle | |
| Where music grows, and beauty is unchained. | |
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| Let Science and Machinery and Trade | |
| Be slaves of her, and make her all in all— | |
| Building against our blatant restless time | 15 |
| An unseen, skillful, mediæval wall. | |
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| Let every citizen be rich toward God. | |
| Let Christ, the beggar, teach divinity— | |
| Let no man rule who holds his money dear. | |
| Let this, our city, be our luxury. | 20 |
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| We should build parks that students from afar | |
| Would choose to starve in, rather than go home— | |
| Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament— | |
| Food for the spirit, milk and honeycomb. | |
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| Songs shall be sung by us in that good day— | 25 |
| Songs we have written—blood within the rhyme | |
| Beating, as when old England still was glad, | |
| The purple, rich, Elizabethan time. | |
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| Say, is my prophecy too fair and far? | |
| I only know, unless her faith be high, | 30 |
| The soul of this our Nineveh is doomed, | |
| Our little Babylon will surely die. | |
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| Some city on the breast of Illinois | |
| No wiser and no better at the start, | |
| By faith shall rise redeemed—by faith shall rise | 35 |
| Bearing the western glory in her heart— | |
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| The genius of the Maple, Elm and Oak, | |
| The secret hidden in each grain of corn— | |
| The glory that the prairie angels sing | |
| At night when sons of Life and Love are born— | 40 |
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| Born but to struggle, squalid and alone, | |
| Broken and wandering in their early years. | |
| When will they make our dusty streets their goal, | |
| Within our attics hide their sacred tears? | |
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| When will they start our vulgar blood athrill | 45 |
| With living language—words that set us free? | |
| When will they make a path of beauty clear | |
| Between our riches and our liberty? | |
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| We must have many Lincoln-hearted men— | |
| A city is not builded in a day— | 50 |
| And they must do their work, and come and go | |
| While countless generations pass away. | |
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