New York

DOWN-GAZING, I behold,Miraculous by night,A city all of gold.Here, there, and everywhere,In myriad fashion fair,A mystery untoldOf Light!

Not royal Babylon,Nor Tyre, nor Rome the great—In the all-powerful stateHer wisdom and her armèd legions won—Was so illuminateAs this strange world which, awed, I look upon.With it compared, the ancient glories fail,And, in the glow it doth irradiate,The planets of the firmament grow pale!

Night, birth-fellow to Chaos, never woreA robe so gemmed before.The splendor streamsIn lines and jets and scintillating gleamsFrom tower and spire and campanile bright,And palaces of light.

How beautiful is thisUnmatched Cosmopolis!—City of wealth and want,Of pitiless extremes,Selfish ambitions, pure aspiring dreams;Whose miseries, remembered, dauntThe bravest spirit hope hath cheered—This city loved and hated, honored, feared:This Titan City, bold to dare:This wounded MightThat, dreading darkness, covers up its careAnd hides its gaping hurt 'neath veils of light!

Oh, I have looked on Venice when the moonSilvered each dark lagoon,And have in dreams beheld herClothed in resplendent pride,The Adriatic's bride!Naples I, too, have seen—An even lovelier Queen—And thought that nothing in the world excelled her—Nay, marvelled, as at close of dayI gazed across her opalescent bayAnd saw Vesuvius burn on highAgainst the soft Italian sky,That anything on earth could wearA charm so past compare!

But, O Manhattan! Glowing nowAgainst the sombre night,Thine opulence and squalor hid from sight,Never was aught more beautiful than thouDost in thy calm appear—So glorified and so transfigured here—Since the Eternal, to creation stirred,Breathed from His awful lips the mystic word:—Let there be Light!