Richard Watson Gilder

THIS watery vague how vast! This misty globe,

Seen from this center where the ferry plies,—

It plies, but seems to poise in middle air,—

Soft gray below gray heavens, and in the West

A rose-gray memory of the sunken sun;

And, where gray water touches grayer sky,

A band of darker gray pricked out with lights,—

A diamond-twinkling circlet bounding all;

And where the statue looms, a quenchless star;

And where the lighthouse, a red, pulsing flame;

While the great bridge its starry diadem

Shows through the gray, itself in grayness lost!