How many dawns, chill from his rip­pling rest
The seag­ul­l’s wings shall dip and piv­ot him,
Shed­ding white rings of tumult, build­ing high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty–

Then, with invi­o­late curve, for­sake our eyes
As appari­tion­al as sails that cross
Some page of fig­ures to be filed away;
–Till ele­va­tors drop us from our day …

I think of cin­e­mas, panoram­ic sleights
With mul­ti­tudes bent toward some flash­ing scene
Nev­er dis­closed, but has­tened to again,
Fore­told to oth­er eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the har­bor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,–
Implic­it­ly thy free­dom stay­ing thee!

Out of some sub­way scut­tle, cell or loft
A bed­lamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilt­ing there moment­ly, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speech­less caravan.

Down Wall, from gird­er into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;
All after­noon the cloud-flown der­ricks turn …
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heav­en of the Jews,
Thy guer­don … Acco­lade thou dost bestow
Of anonymi­ty time can­not raise:
Vibrant reprieve and par­don thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choir­ing strings!)
Ter­rif­ic thresh­old of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pari­ah, and the lover’s cry,–

Again the traf­fic lights that skim thy swift
Unfrac­tioned idiom, immac­u­late sigh of stars,
Bead­ing thy path–condense eternity:
And we have seen night lift­ed in thine arms.

Under thy shad­ow by the piers I waited;
Only in dark­ness is thy shad­ow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow sub­merges an iron year …

O Sleep­less as the riv­er under thee,
Vault­ing the sea, the prairies’ dream­ing sod,
Unto us lowli­est some­time sweep, descend
And of the curve­ship lend a myth to God. 

 

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