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Home  »  The Book of New York Verse  »  Park Benjamin

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

New York Harbor

Park Benjamin

  • Written in view of the harbor of New York on the loveliest and calmest of the last days of autumn.


  • IS this a painting? Are those pictured clouds

    Which on the sky so movelessly repose?

    Has some rare artist fashioned forth the shrouds

    Of yonder vessel? Are these imaged shows

    Of outline, figure, form, or is there life—

    Life with a thousand pulses—in the scene

    We gaze upon, those towering banks between,

    Ere tossed these billows in tumultuous strife?

    Billows! there’s not a wave! the waters spread

    One broad, unbroken mirror! all around

    Is hushed to silence,—silence so profound

    That a bird’s carol, or an arrow sped

    Into the distance, would, like larum bell,

    Jar the deep stillness and dissolve the spell!