| |
| VIVID with love, eager for greater beauty | |
| Out of the night we came | |
| Into the corridor, brilliant and warm. | |
| A metal door slides open, | |
| And the lift receives us. | 5 |
| Swiftly, with sharp unswerving flight | |
| The car shoots upward, | |
| And the air, swirling and angry, | |
| Howls like a hundred devils. | |
| Past the maze of trim bronze doors, | 10 |
| Steadily we ascend | |
| I cling to you | |
| Conscious of the chasm under us, | |
| And a terrible whirring deafens my ears. | |
| |
| The flight is ended. | 15 |
| |
| We pass through a door leading onto the ledge— | |
| Wind, night and space! | |
| Oh terrible height | |
| Why have we sought you? | |
| Oh bitter wind with icy invisible wings | 20 |
| Why do you beat us? | |
| Why would you bear us away? | |
| We look through the miles of air, | |
| The cold blue miles between us and the city, | |
| Over the edge of eternity we look | 25 |
| On all the lights, | |
| A thousand times more numerous than the stars; | |
| Oh lines and loops of light in unwound chains | |
| That mark for miles and miles | |
| The vast black mazy cobweb of the streets; | 30 |
| Near us clusters and splashes of living gold | |
| That change far off to bluish steel | |
| Where the fragile lights on the Jersey shore | |
| Tremble like drops of wind-stirred dew. | |
| The strident noises of the city | 35 |
| Floating up to us | |
| Are hallowed into whispers. | |
| Ferries cross through the darkness | |
| Weaving a golden thread into the night, | |
| Their whistles weird shadows of sound. | 40 |
| |
| We feel the millions of humanity beneath us,— | |
| The warm millions, moving under the roofs, | |
| Consumed by their own desires; | |
| Preparing food, | |
| Sobbing alone in a garret, | 45 |
| With burning eyes bending over a needle, | |
| Aimlessly reading the evening paper, | |
| Dancing in the naked light of the café, | |
| Laying out the dead, | |
| Bringing a child to birth— | 50 |
| The sorrow, the torpor, the bitterness, the frail joy | |
| Come up to us | |
| Like a cold fog wrapping us round, | |
| Oh in a hundred years | |
| Not one of these blood-warm bodies | 55 |
| But will be worthless as clay. | |
| The anguish, the torpor, the toil | |
| Will have passed to other millions | |
| Consumed by the same desires. | |
| Ages will come and go, | 60 |
| Darkness will blot the lights | |
| And the tower will be laid on the earth. | |
| The sea will remain | |
| Black and unchanging, | |
| The stars will look down | 65 |
| Brilliant and unconcerned. | |
| |
| Beloved, | |
| Tho’ sorrow, futility, defeat | |
| Surround us, | |
| They cannot bear us down. | 70 |
| Here on the abyss of eternity | |
| Love has crowned us | |
| For a moment | |
| Victors. | |
| |
