Edward Arlington Robinson. The White Lights. Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. 1917. The Book of New York Verse

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

The White Lights

By Edward Arlington Robinson


Broadway, 1906 WHEN in from Delos came the gold
That held the dream of Pericles,
When first Athenian ears were told
The tumult of Euripides,
When men met Aristophanes,	5
Who fledged them with immortal quills—
Here, where the time knew none of these,
There were some islands and some hills.

When Rome went ravening to see
The sons of mothers end their days,	10
When Flaccus had Leuconoë
To banish her Chaldean ways,
When first the pearled, alembic phrase
Of Maro into music ran,
Here there was neither blame nor praise	15
For Rome or for the Mantuan.

When Avon, like a faery floor,
Lay freighted, for the eyes of One,
With galleons laden long before
By moonlit wharves in Avalon—	20
Here, where the white lights have begun
To seethe a way for something fair,
No prophet knew, from what was done,
That there was triumph in the air.