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Home  »  The Book of New York Verse  »  John Curtis Underwood

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

The Moraine

John Curtis Underwood

LOOK down, love, from the Bridge’s height

And see the buildings piled below,

A heap of pebbles in the night

Where stars like fireflies come and go.

Here by the border of the sea

Where life has left its last moraine,

The soul of man eternally

Resigns its pleasure and its pain.

The glacier glides into the deep,

An endless river of the years,

From the far mountains where they sleep

Who first begot our hopes and fears.

Cave-man, Crusader, scientist,

They pass as pass the centuries;

And teach these stones to still persist

To tally time’s infinities.

What does it all mean? Æons dear

Have left Manhattan here to-day

That we might meet. Our home is here

To share with others while we may.