| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | City Whistles | | By Edith Wyatt |
| | To H. M.
NOW the morning winds are rising. Now the morning whistles cry. | |
| Fast their crescent voices dim the paling star. | |
| Through the misted city mainland, wide their questing summons fly | |
| Many-toned—“O mortal, tell me who you are!” | |
| Down the midland, down the morning, fresh their sweeping voices buoy: | 5 |
| “Siren ship! Silver ship! Sister ship! Ahoy! Sister ship, ahoy! Ship ahoy!” | |
| “What’s the stuff of life you’re made from? What the cargo you must trade from?” | |
| From afar their onward voices break the blue, | |
| Crying, “Bring your gold or barley! Come to barter! Come to parley! | |
| Ring the bell, and swing the bridge, and let me through.” | 10 |
| Like some freighted ship that goes, where the city river flows, | |
| Like a trading ship that questions, “Who are you?” | |
| In among the river craft, as she rides by stack and shaft | |
| Through Chicago from Sheboygan and the Soo. | |
| “What’s the stuff of life you’re made from? What the cargo you convoy? | 15 |
| Ring the bell! Swing the bridge! Sister ship, ahoy!” | |
| At last | |
| The twilight rises fast. | |
| “Hard was the day!” | |
| The questing whistles say. | 20 |
| Over wall and plinth, ascendant, smoke-wreaths, hyacinth, resplendent, | |
| Curl and flow; | |
| And many-voiced the evening whistles bay, | |
| “Hard was our day.” | |
| The scaling whistles say, | 25 |
| “Our jarred and jangled day.” | |
| Then all their clamors blow, | |
| “Great was our day!” | |
| And sing a tale of fate untold and fugitive, | |
| Something spacious, something mordant, something gracious and discordant, | 30 |
| Mean and splendid, something all our lives here live. | |
| Down the midland mists at twilight, have you heard their singing sweep, | |
| Where their far-toned voices, many-chorded, buoy— | |
| And our mortal ways in wonder hail creation’s unknown deep— | |
| “Siren ship! Silver ship! Sister ship, ahoy!” | 35 | | | |
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