  Miraculous city! Thoughts stupendous to crush the wise, Buildings monstrous which brush the skies! Raise your eyes In awe. Yet pity This marvellous, golden, mushroom city. Hear the roar! Like the moan of the sea, when the wave curls back From the granite rock which whirls it back, A great unceasingly grinding drone In a heavy unyielding monotone. 'Tis the frenzied wail of the lost in pain, The shriek of the damned raised in vain, Again! again! And the stamping machine with a brutal joy Wrenches the gold from its quartz alloy, Crushing the tortured stone to dust As it yields the ore To the vast unquenchable thirst for lust. Feel the south wind! As it sweeps the veld with its icy breath, Biting the scrub with its teeth of death, lifting the dust like a phantom shroud From the tailing heaps, in a veil of cloud. From the chimney line that marks the rise Of the Main Reef ridge. Some devil's bridge To bind the town to the broad full plain Which rolls beyond, like the boundless main. Precocious town! The forward child of a youthful state So young in years. So rich, so great In gilt renown, And glittering fate! Oh! ponder deep, all ye! Yet pity This marvellous, golden, old-young city! |
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