John Gould Fletcher. Lake Front at Night. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Lake Front at Night

By John Gould Fletcher


From “Chicago Notes” AT the edge of a beautiful gulf of gloom and stillness
The city rises—
Glittering with millions of spangles
Seen between the dull smoke of the trains,
That struggle and tug laboriously	5
And bump empty freight-cars into each other
With a noise like surf collapsing.

Beyond there is windy darkness—
One or two lights low down
Seemingly blurred by mist,	10
And waterish stars;
For the wind is bringing rain
To stream down the spangled faces,
And make the light-terraces melt together
Growing more dim.	15

But the engines cough and call;
One or two lights in the silence
Watch the night shutting slowly down dark doors on the city.
Behind her spangled mask
She frowns a little, standing more weary,	20
But still casting out on the darkness
Her glory, where winds will whirl it
Through dry splinters of grass on the dunes.