CHICAGO

On the gray paper of this mist and fog

With dust for the erasure and with smoke

For drawing crayons, be this charcoal scrawl:

The breed of Gog in the kingdom of Magog,

Skyscrapers, helmeted, stand sentinel

Amid the obscuring fumes of coal and coke,

Raised by enchantment out of the sand and bog.

This sky-line, the Sierras of the lake,

Cuts with dulled teeth,

Which twist and break,

The imponderable and drifting steam.

And restlessly beneath

This man-created mountain chain,

Like the flow of a prairie river

Endlessly by day and night, forever

Along the boulevards pedestrians stream

In a shuffle like dancers to a low refrain:

Forever by day and night

Pursuing as of old the lure of delight,

And the ghosts of pleasure or pain.

Their rhythmic feet sound like the falling of rain,

Or the hush of the waves, when the roar

Is blown by a wind off shore.

From a tower like a mountain promontory

The cesspool of a railroad lies to view

Fouling the marble of the city's glory:

A crapulous sluice of garbage and of cars

Where engines rush and whistle, smudge the blue

With filth like the trail of slugs.

It is a trench of steel which bars

Free access to the common shore, and hugs

In a coil of lazar arms the boulevard.

Cattle and hogs delivered here for slaughter

Corrupt the loveliness of the water front.

They low and grunt,

Switched back and forth within the tangled yard.

But from this tower the amethystine water,

The water of jade or slate,

Is visible with its importunate

Gestures against the sky to still retreats

In Michigan, of quiet woods and hills

Beyond the simmering passion of these streets,

And all their endless ills....

But over the switch yard stands the Institute

Guarded by lions on the avenue,

Colossal lions standing for attack;

Between whose feet luminous and resolute

Children of the city passing through

To palettes, compasses, the demoniac

Spirit of the city shall subdue.

Lions are in the loop and jackals too.

They have no trainers but the alderman,

Who uses them to hunt with, but in time

The city shall behold its nobler plan

Achieved by hands that rhyme,

Workers who architect and build,

And out of thought its substance re-arrange,

Till all its prophecies shall be fulfilled.

Through numbers, science and art

The city shall know change,

And win dominion over water and light,

The cyclop's mastery of the mart;

The devils overcome,

Which stalk the squalid ways by night

Of poverty and the slum,

Where the crook is spawned, the burglar and the bum.

These youths who pass the lions shall assuage

The city's thirst and hunger,

And save it from the wastage and the wage

Of the demagogue, the precinct monger.

This is the city of great doges hidden

In guarded offices and country places.

The city strives against the things forbidden

By the doges, on whose faces

The city at large never looks;

Doges who could accomplish if they would

In a month the city's beauty and good.

Yet this city in a hundred years has risen

Out of a haunt of foxes, wolves and rooks,

And breaks asunder now the bars of the prison

Of dead days and dying. It has spread

For many a rood its boundaries, like the sprawled

And fallen Hephaestos, and has tenanted

Its neighborhoods increasing and unwalled

With peoples from all lands.

From Milwaukee Avenue to the populous mills

Of South Chicago, from the Sheridan Drive

Through forests where the water smiles

To Harlem for miles and miles.

It reaches out its hands,

Powerful and alive

With dreams to touch tomorrow, which it wills

To dawn and which shall dawn....

And like lights that twinkle through the stench

And putrid mist of abattoirs,

Great souls are here, separate and withdrawn,

Companionless, whom darkness cannot quench.

Seeing they are the chrysalis which must feed

Upon its own thoughts and the life to be,

Its flight among the stars.

Beauty is here, like half protected flowers,

Blooms and will cast its multiplying seed,

Until one mass of color shall succeed

The shaley places of these arid hours.

Chicago! by this inland sea

In the land of Lincoln, in the state

Of souls who held the nation's fate,

City both old and young, I consecrate

Your future years to truth and liberty.

Be this the record frail and incomplete

Of one who saw you, mingled with the masses

Along these magical mountain passes

With restless yet with hopeful feet.

Could they return to see you who have slept

These fifty years, who laid your first foundations!

And oh! could we behold you who have kept

Their promises for you, when new generations

Shall walk this boulevard made fair

In chiseled marble, looking at the lake

Of clearer water under a bluer air.

We who shall sleep then nor awake,

Have left the labor to you and the care

Ask great fulfillment, for ourselves a prayer!