THE MUNICIPAL PIER

Great snail whose lofty horns are knobbed with gold; Long javelin of red-wood lying straight Upon the changing indigos which unfold In blues and chrysophrases from the gate Of this our city sea-ward, till the gull Becomes a gnat where lights annihilate The wings’ last beat! Or are you like a hull Pompeiian red upon the Nile’s slate green? Or are you like these clouds which fanciful Half open eyes make giant fish serene, And motionless as rifts of carbuncles Sunk in a waste of faience sky, between Such terrifying turquoise? Darkness dulls The torches of your towers struck to flame By sun-set, and you mass amid the hulls Of shadows on the water, then reclaim This blackness with a thousand eyes of light! Peiræus made with hands, which over-came The waters, where no point of land gave might To walls and slips, no Peiraic promontory Inspired our Hippodamus in his flight Sea-ward with docks, parades, an auditory For music and a dancing floor for youths, But only the sea tempted. Telling the story That grows within the loop, its dens and booths, And palaces of trade, is to omit The city’s lofty genius and the truths Through which she works at best, against the wit Of creatures who would sell her body, take The money of the sale as perquisite For grossness in luxurious life. Awake Themistocles of us and carve the dream Of Burnham into stone! Along this lake Such as no city looks on, to redeem Its shores from shrieks and crashes, refuse, smoke His architectural vision sketched the scheme Of harbors, islands, boulevards—he spoke For these, the concourse, stadium and a tomb For that dull infamy of filth whose cloak Is law, hiding the greedy hands that doom To long delay with bribery. He is gone These several years into the narrow room Where beauty is no more of walk or lawn, Or arch or peristyle, but still he says: “Work quickly into form what I have drawn, And give Chicago of these middle days The glory which it merits: To this Pier Make wide the marble way, build new the quays Give to the swimmers depths made fresh and clear, Lay out the flowering gardens, founts and pools Such as Versailles knows. The river steer Under the arches of two decked bascules.” Look at the photographs of seventy-six, Whoever you are who mocks or ridicules This city, then imagine stones and bricks Which from such lowness rose, in fifty years By so much grown miraculous to transfix The future’s wonder as ours is for piers Like this, Chicago! O ye men who wield Small strength or great or none, too apt at sneers For men who did too little, you must yield Your names for judgment soon, have you done more To make this city great than Marshall Field? While you were railing, idling, on this shore Hands silent, out of sight were plunged in toil. You woke one morning to the waters’ roar And saw these gilded turrets flash and spoil The sun-light of the spring. What have you sown Of truth or beauty in this eager soil To make your living felt, your labor known? Sometimes I see silk banners in the sky, And hear the sound of silver trumpets blown, And bells high turreted. And passing by This firmament of rolling blue great throngs Stream in an air of brilliant sun where I A century gone am of it, when my songs Are but a record of a day that died, And saw the end of desecrating wrongs. How sweet bells are borne on the evening tide High up where heaven is flushed and the moon’s sphere Looks down on temples, arches, where the wide Eternal waters thunder round the Pier!