Classic Poem

Still through The City I ponder,
Still do I wonder and wander.
City — unconscious descendant
Of olden-time cities resplendent!
Child of rich forefathers hoary,
Clad in their gloom and their glory! —
Dream I of you in the rich, mellow past,
Throbbing with life, and with Death overcast.
Thebes — not to you, crushed and ghastly and dumb,
Even the wreck-loving Ivy will come!
Where stood your hundred broad, world-famous gates.
Now a black Arab for charity waits.
Not like this City — metropolis bold —
Where the whole world brings its good and its gold!

Babylon — here the queen's gardens climbed high,
Painting their flowers on the blue of the sky:
This is where sinners, exultant in power,
Thought they could travel to Heaven by tower.
(How like some sinners to-day, whose desires
Mount by the way of their greed-builded spires!)

Troy — of rare riches and valor possessed,
Ruined fore'er by one beautiful guest —
(Here many Helens, though less of renown,
Do for some men what she did for a town!)

Wondrous Palmyra, whose island of green,
'Mid the bleak sand, reared the beautiful queen
(Sweet-faced Zenobia, peerless,
Proud in her virtue, and fearless):
In this metropolis, virtuously grand,
Many a queen is a joy to the land!

Tyre — the huge pillars that groaned under thee,
Rest in the depths of a desolate sea;
Long live the world ere the spray's salted showers
Foam o'er the walls of this city of ours!

Mound-men's vast cities, whose graves we accost,
Even your names are in ruins — and lost,
What if, some time when this nation is nought,
Vainly our names in our graves should be sought!
Cities that yet are to flourish,
That the rich Future must nourish!
Where will you take up your stations —
Where set your massive foundations?
Where are the slumbering meadows,
Dreaming of clouds through their shadows,
That by rough wheels rudely shaken,
Into new life shall awaken?
Harbors that placidly float
Nought but the fisherman's boat,
Think you of fleets that shall lie
Under the blue of your sky;
When shall be built on your land
Palaces wealthily grand;
When in your face from tall spires
Gleam the electrical fires?
Cities that yet are to be,
You are not phantoms to me!
You are as certain and sure
As that Old Time shall endure.

Stars in the distant, mysterious sky,
Flashing and flaming and dancing on high,
Each is an earth to its millions,
Each has its domes and pavilions.
Cities, I see you — by reasoning led —
On the great map with blue leaves overhead.
Seaport and lakeport and rich inland town,
Capital city, and village of brown;
Thanking the prairie-food-givers,
Strung on the winding star-rivers,
Earths that can signal to earths, every one,
With the bright torches you stole from the sun,
Each on its surface has strown
Cities and towns of its own,
Fraught with their crimes and their graces,
Full of mysterious places.
They are no myths unto me —
Clearly their outlines I see;
Millions of towns I descry
Hanging o'er me from the sky,

Still through the paths of the town,
Dreaming, I walk up and down.
Is it so much of a wonder —
Part of this whole, yet asunder,
I in this throng, and I only —
That I am wretched and lonely?
Loneliness — loneliness ever —
Leaving me utterly, never!
Yes, I am part of this ocean
Of matter and mind and emotion;
Yet how entirely apart,
Severed in mind and in heart!