Classic Poem

(New York from the North River)

In deepening shades the haunting vision swims;
A denser greyness settles o'er the stream;
The domes are veiled; the wondrous City dims —
Dims as a dream:

The night transforms it to a palace vast,
Lit with a thousand lamps from cryptic wires;
The vaporous walls are phantoms of the Past,
Strange with vague spires:

Huge, peopled monoliths that touch the skies,
Whose indeterminate bases baffle sight,
Each with its Argus, incandescent eyes
Pierces the night:

Undreamt of heights of glimmering marble loom
Like some enchanted fabric wrought of air;
Gigantic shafts of insubstantial gloom
Lift, shadowy, there:

Could fabled Camelot of the poet's dream
Surpass these towers soaring from the mist? —
These steel-ribbed granite miracles that gleam
Dim amethyst? ...

Slow on the tide, from murky coves remote,
The freighted barges move, laboriously,
While some palatial, golden-lighted boat
Steams for the sea:

Now that the moon is breaking through the cloud
The radiant halo o'er the City pales;
Shimmer the dusky wharves with mast and shroud
And furled sails:

Soft strains of music, hovering, drift away;
In cloudy turrets toll the spectral bells;
While the sea-voices, from the wastes of grey,
Send faint farewells:

The homing sloops are sheltered in the slip:
The silence deepens; and up-stream afar,
A fading lantern on an anchored ship
Seems a lost star.