Lift thee, Manhattan, no peer to thy strength, Energy crystalled in turrets of stone, Force chained to form thro’ thy breadth and thy length, The builders’ Gibraltar, the fortress of trade, Might of the mart into monument fashioned, Mammon translated to mountain man-made, The clouds ever nigher and nigher; And the clang of the anvil, the steam-shriek impassioned Seem calling from girder and frontlet of steel Upward thrown, With the square-chiseled blocks, As they build ever higher and higher, And then, for firm planting thy heel, They delve ever deeper to heart of the rocks. Deep in thy vitals the dynamos whirring, Are feeding thy nerves that are wires, Thy tunnels, thy veins, Stretch out as the human tide swerves, And thy hidden fires With the breath of thy bosom stirring, Make life in the dark for thy lightning trains. And out of it all a new beauty arising, The beauty of force, Winning a triumph beyond thy devising, Height-mad and power-glad Pinnacled, domed, crenelated, Masonry clambering course upon course, To a glory of skyline serrated, Lofty and meet For the worship of all the waves laving thy feet. Mighty, ay mighty Manhattan, Grown, while Time counted but three arrow flights, From bare strand and woodland and slow rising knoll— A handful of redmen encamped on thy heights— To the city of millions; Of millions too ever the goal, City whose riches are billions, Whose might never fails, Whom the nations from far off salute, And the voice of a continent hails On thy festival day! While the cries of the multitude roll In praise of thy marble-hewn body majestic, Sing to me, queen, of thy soul. Sing of thy spirit, thy mind, Remembering then, The kernel and not the rind, The heat not the fires. We shall not judge thee by thy tallest spires, But by the stature of thy men; Not thy great wealth of bales and casks and gold, Nor mounting scales of what thou’st bought or sold Shall here suffice, But riches thine in virtues beyond price: