| Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917. | | | | Return to New York | | By John Hall Wheelock |
| | | FAR and free o’er the lifting sea, the lapsing wastes and the waves that roam, | |
| Hour by hour with sleepless power the keel has furrowed the soft, sad foam; | |
| Slowly now, with steadier prow, she steals through the dim gray fog-banks home. | |
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| Faint and far from across the bar the first lines burn of the cloudy day, | |
| From whistle and horn in the twilit morn low murmurs are wafted across the bay. | 5 |
| The fleet, sweet swing of the sea-bird’s wing beats down the darkness and dies away. | |
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| Dawn,—and lo, as the rifted snow that melts from the sun on a mountain height, | |
| As the veils from a bride that fall and divide, the fog veils sunder and leave in sight, | |
| Like Venice, dim on the water’s rim, the city, my mother, bared and bright. | |
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| In the first hours her stately towers and clustered summits show faint and fair: | 10 |
| Mother, mother, to thee and none other the heart cries out in the morning there! | |
| Solemnly, slowly, the white mists wholly fade, and the whole, sweet form lies bare. | |
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| Hail, all hail, with the dawn for veil, the sea for throne and the stars for crown! | |
| Mother, thy son, his journeying done, triumphantly here at thine heart bows down; | |
| Love that sings, on the sea-wind’s wings runs on to greet thee his very own. | 15 | | | |
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