This is the Gate of the Gray City—wrought

With piled roofs and steeples dimly seen

Thru the gray dusk—pale, wistful flakes of fire

Kindled about its lower fringe—vast murk—

A snuffling monster with an evil eye

That surly pants to work some will unknown,

Blowing white breaths—a semaphore

With lifted arm—a form that swings a light

In arcs, against infinitude of gray,

Uneasy sounds, the clink and clank and groan;

Of things inanimate—the curves of rails

In rhythmical convergence gathered up—

(And gathering up what burdens from afar!)

Monotony—monotony—despair!

This is the Gate of the Gray City.

Whatever our immitigable end,

The earth’s our home and prison thru whose windows

Our wistful scrutinizing minds traverse

The sky’s dissolving continents, exult

In melancholy mountains or, shackled,

Envy the inconstant sea that seems

An uncontaminated god, alone, complete

In mighty passion and the scorn of time.

I love the skyward-spiring tree

For its supreme unconsciousness of me.

So let us seek the lands that the Gods love,

The soil unsown, the isles of sumptuous store;

Where fallow fields yield yearly fee of grain,

And vines unpruned produce perennial bloom,

And olive slips engender faithfully,

And dark figs deck their trees; the cavernous oaks

Bleed honey’d drops, and from high hills descend

The nimble waters with melodious feet.