Classic Poem

The winter breath of ocean, cool and clean,
Comes floating high and drifting down
Into the lights of town.
The sins of streets are hidden in a mist
Pale yellow, shot with topaz, amethyst;
Houses old and harsh and mean,
The veriest hags in conscious ugliness,
Are garmented in luminous loveliness,
Veils of thinnest lawn
Billowing over their feet and over their shoulders drawn.

Here on the splendid avenue
I swear but a moment ago there stood
Ten thousand tons of steel and stone and wood,
With a thousand lights aflare
Story upon story. All are gone.
Blown away like the wraith of a dream
Into upper air,
With a thousand lamps agleam.

True is the fine illusion, true!
The ponderous, leaden world
So stubborn to resist,
Is melted by the magic of the mist.
The elements disintegrate and shift,
They mingle and surge and flow;
Sudden the whole vast city swings adrift
And knows not where to go.