And the Rock drinks in its thousands from the moving flood in the street As the strong male tide goes out with the roar of a million feet. I know when the night comes down that a beautiful Siren awakes. I have seen the flash of her eyes and the light that her shadow makes On the rain-wet Avenue when the flutes of pleasure are heard And she dances her way to the wine cup and sings like a bird. Hand in hand go the sons of Youth and the daughters of Beauty divine, And the children of Hunger are there who have trodden the grapes of their wine, And the thousands pour and pour through the huge illumined Fair, And the booths of a hundred lands are bright and the Wonder-worker is there. The red star is out on the roof and the horses are off on the wall, And the girl and the dog are blown along and the flashing water fall, And the flush of thy far-flung revel goes up to the ribbons of sky, And forgotten Orion sinks down and the Pleiades die. I have trailed down the pleasant river; I have tramped where the iron “L’s” Go thundering down through the haunts of care; I have slummed through the hidden hells; I have jostled the mingling Bowery where the stream of the races rolls; I know the town where the yellow man goes by on his velvet soles; I have threaded the still, dark canyons where the clustered towers rise; Not a foot is heard of the thousands; they are ghosts on the midnight skies; I have seen o’er the glamour of waters thy piles upon shadowy piles Standing out on the canvas of night and twinkling for miles upon miles. As a grail is the gleam of thy towers and the glow of the Great White Way, And a thousand ships have sailed and sailed to the lure of the lights on the Bay, And the spell of thy song, O Enchantress, is sweet on the southern air, And the shepherd far out on the plains feels the sting of thy hair. Thou art young with the youth of them, strong with the strength of them, filled with the beauty of girls; Thy throat where the River gleams is beaded with lamps as with pearls; And the languor of night is around thee and the waters rise and fall, And over invisible bridges slow fireworms crawl, And the Ferries that glide o’er the bay, o’er the rivers that lave The feet of thy emerald towers, are lighted swans on the wave, As Merlin had walked o’er thy waters, or Prospero’s eye Were watching alternate old cities line out on the sky, One moment Jerusalem gleams and thy towers are holy and white, And lo, at the turn of a glass, old Babylon etched on the night With high summer gardens abloom and the wealth of the world in her hair; Then Carnival laughs in thy streets and Cairo is there Barbaric all over with brooches and fountains of fire Till the new day quenches the lamps and flares over Tyre.