Classic Poem

On the middle arch of the bridge
I stood,
And mused, as the twilight failed—
The bridge that murmurs and sings,
Swinging between the tides and the skies
Like a harp that the sea winds sweep—
Night flooded in from the bay,
With billow on billow of shadow and beauty,
With wave upon wave
Of illusion and dusk,
And before me, apparelled in splendour,
Banded with loops of light,
Clothed on with purple and magic,
Rose the tall towers of Manhattan,
Wonderful under the stars.

Whence has this miracle sprung
To challenge the skies?
From the plinth of our girdled island,
Guarded by sentinel waters,
How has this glory arisen?
Whence is the faith,
What is the creed,
That has dowered the dumb brute rock and the sullen iron
With a beauty so vital,
With a grace so vivid and real?
Whence the strong wings of this lyric that soars like a song in stone?

For the builders
Builded in blindness;
Little they thought of the ultimate
Uses of beauty!
Little they kenned and nothing they recked
Of the raptures of conscious and masterful art—
They builded as blind as the men who raised
The naïvely blasphemous challenge of Babel—
For they wrought in the sordid humour
Of greed
And the lust for power;
They wrought in the heat of the bitter
Battle for gold;
And some of them ground men's lives for their mortar,
Taking the conquerors' toll
From the veins and bones of the driven millions—
Of curses and tears they builded,
Of cruelty and crime and sorrow—
And behold!
By a baffling magic
Is the work of these builders transmuted
To temples and towers that are crowned
With a glamour transcendent
That lifts up the heart like the smile of a god.

And how has this beauty sprung out of greed?
The dust is the dust, and forever
Receiveth its own;
But the dreams of a man or a people
Forever survive—
These builders, their crimes and their curses,
Their greed and their sordid endeavour,
Lie in the dust,
Dead in the dust,
But the vision, the dream and the glory
Remain.
Triumphantly over all
Rises the secret hope,
Rises the baffled illusion,
Rises the broken dream
That hid in the heart of the conquered,
That dwelt in the conqueror's breast—
By the side of each man as he laboured,
Unseen and unknown
Laboured his dream—

Now, eminent,
Fronting the morning,
Mysterious,
Clothed with the night,
Rises the crushed aspiration,
The unconscious and scarcely articulate prayer,
Rises the faith forgotten,
Rises the spurned ideal,
Triumphs the god denied,
Conquers the creed betrayed,
Rises the broken spirit,
All flowering in visible, durable marvel of stone and of steel,
Miraculous under the heavens,
Wonderful under the stars.
Mock at the gods if you will;
Even forget their existence,
But always they labour in secret
To bring to a sudden and golden achievement their subtle intentions—
And lo! from the dung a lily!
A temple out of the clay!
A city out of a rabble!
And behold
The strong hands of Manhattan
Mightily lifted up
And grasping the gold of the sunset
For a crown for her head!