  IOn the gray paper of this mist and fog With dust for the erasure and with smoke For drawing crayons, be this charcoal scrawl: The breed of Gog in the kingdom of Magog, Skyscrapers, helmeted, stand sentinel Amid the obscuring fumes of coal and coke, Raised by enchantment out of the sand and bog. This sky-line, the Sierras of the lake, Cuts with dulled teeth, Which twist and break, The imponderable and drifting steam. And restlessly beneath This man-created mountain chain, Like the flow of a prairie river Endlessly by day and night, forever Along the boulevards pedestrians stream In a shuffle like dancers to a low refrain: Forever by day and night Pursuing as of old the lure of delight, And the ghosts of pleasure or pain. Their rhythmic feet sound like the falling of rain, Or the hush of the waves, when the roar Is blown by a wind off shore. IIFrom a tower like a mountain promontory The cesspool of a railroad lies to view Fouling the marble of the city's glory: A crapulous sluice of garbage and of cars Where engines rush and whistle, smudge the blue With filth like the trail of slugs. It is a trench of steel which bars Free access to the common shore, and hugs In a coil of lazar arms the boulevard. Cattle and hogs delivered here for slaughter Corrupt the loveliness of the water front. They low and grunt, Switched back and forth within the tangled yard. But from this tower the amethystine water, The water of jade or slate, Is visible with its importunate Gestures against the sky to still retreats In Michigan, of quiet woods and hills Beyond the simmering passion of these streets, And all their endless ills.... IIIBut over the switch yard stands the Institute Guarded by lions on the avenue, Colossal lions standing for attack; Between whose feet luminous and resolute Children of the city passing through To palettes, compasses, the demoniac Spirit of the city shall subdue. Lions are in the loop and jackals too. They have no trainers but the alderman, Who uses them to hunt with, but in time The city shall behold its nobler plan Achieved by hands that rhyme, Workers who architect and build, And out of thought its substance re-arrange, Till all its prophecies shall be fulfilled. Through numbers, science and art The city shall know change, And win dominion over water and light, The cyclop's mastery of the mart; The devils overcome, Which stalk the squalid ways by night Of poverty and the slum, Where the crook is spawned, the burglar and the bum. These youths who pass the lions shall assuage The city's thirst and hunger, And save it from the wastage and the wage Of the demagogue, the precinct monger. IVThis is the city of great doges hidden In guarded offices and country places. The city strives against the things forbidden By the doges, on whose faces The city at large never looks; Doges who could accomplish if they would In a month the city's beauty and good. Yet this city in a hundred years has risen Out of a haunt of foxes, wolves and rooks, And breaks asunder now the bars of the prison Of dead days and dying. It has spread For many a rood its boundaries, like the sprawled And fallen Hephaestos, and has tenanted Its neighborhoods increasing and unwalled With peoples from all lands. From Milwaukee Avenue to the populous mills Of South Chicago, from the Sheridan Drive Through forests where the water smiles To Harlem for miles and miles. It reaches out its hands, Powerful and alive With dreams to touch tomorrow, which it wills To dawn and which shall dawn.... And like lights that twinkle through the stench And putrid mist of abattoirs, Great souls are here, separate and withdrawn, Companionless, whom darkness cannot quench. Seeing they are the chrysalis which must feed Upon its own thoughts and the life to be, Its flight among the stars. Beauty is here, like half protected flowers, Blooms and will cast its multiplying seed, Until one mass of color shall succeed The shaley places of these arid hours. VChicago! by this inland sea In the land of Lincoln, in the state Of souls who held the nation's fate, City both old and young, I consecrate Your future years to truth and liberty. Be this the record frail and incomplete Of one who saw you, mingled with the masses Along these magical mountain passes With restless yet with hopeful feet. Could they return to see you who have slept These fifty years, who laid your first foundations! And oh! could we behold you who have kept Their promises for you, when new generations Shall walk this boulevard made fair In chiseled marble, looking at the lake Of clearer water under a bluer air. We who shall sleep then nor awake, Have left the labor to you and the care Ask great fulfillment, for ourselves a prayer! |
|
