Still the saintly City stands,

Wondrous work oF busy hands;

Still the lonely City thrives,

Rich in worldly goods and wives,

And with thrust-out jaw and set

Teeth, the Yankee threatens yet—

Half admiring and half riled,

Oft by bigger schemes beguiled,

Turning off his curious stare

To communities elsewhere.

Always with unquiet eye

Watching Utah on the sly.

Long the City of the Plain

Left its image on my brain:

White kiosks and gardens bright

Rising in a golden light;

Busy figures everywhere

Bustling bee-like in the glare;

And from dovecots in green places,

Peep'd out weary women's faces,

Flushing faint to a thin cry

From the nursery hard by.

And the City in my thought

Slept fantastically wrought,

Till the whole began to seem

Like a curious Eastern dream,

Like the pictures strange we scan

In the tales Arabian:

Tales of magic art and sleight,

Cities rising in a night,

And of women richly clad,

Dark-eyed, melancholy, sad,

Ever with a glance uncertain,

Trembling at the purple curtain,

Lest behind the black slave stand

With the bowstring in his hand

Happy tales, within whose heart

Founts of weeping eyes upstart,

Told, to save her pretty head,

By Scheherazad in bed!

All had faded and grown faint,

Save the figure of the Saint

Who that memorable night

Left the Children of the Light,

Flying o'er the lonely plain

From his lofty sphere of pain

Oft his gentle face would flit

O'er my mind and puzzle it,

Ever waking up meanwhile

Something of a merry smile,

Whose quick light illumined me

During many a reverie,

When I puffed my weed alone.

Faint and strange the face had grown,

Tho' for five long years or so

I had watched it come and go,

When, on busy thoughts intent,

I into New England went,

And one evening, riding slow

By a River that I know,

(Gentle stream! I hide thy name,

Far too modest thou for fame!)

I beheld the landscape swim

In the autumn hazes dim,

And from out the neighbouring dales

Heard the thumping of the flails.

All was hush'd; afar away

(As a novelist would say)