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THE SHADOWY CITY LOOMS; NEW YORK FROM THE NORTH RIVER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: In deepening shades the haunting vision swims
Last Line: Seems a lost star.
Subject(s): New York City; Ships & Shipping; Travel; Manhattan; New York, New York; The Big Apple; Journeys; Trips


In deepening shades the haunting vision swims;
A denser greyness settles o'er the stream;
The domes are veiled; the wondrous City dims—
Dims as a dream:

The night transforms it to a palace vast
Lit with a thousand lamps from cryptic wires;
The vaporous walls are phantoms of the Past,
Strange with vague spires:

Huge, peopled monoliths that touch the skies,
Whose indeterminate bases baffle sight,
Each with its Argus, incandescent eyes
Pierces the night:

Undreamt-of heights of glimmering marble loom
Like some enchanted fabric wrought of air;
Gigantic shafts of insubstantial gloom
Lift, shadowy, there:

Could fabled Camelot of the poet's dream
Surpass these towers soaring from the mist?—
These steel-ribbed granite miracles that gleam
Dim amethyst? ...

Slow on the tide, from murky coves remote,
The freighted barges move, laboriously,
While some palatial, golden-lighted boat
Steams for the sea:

Now that the moon is breaking through the cloud
The radiant halo o'er the City pales;
Shimmer the dusky wharves with mast and shroud
And furlèd sails:

Soft strains of music, hovering, drift away;
In cloudy turrets toll the spectral bells;
While the sea-voices, from the wastes of grey,
Send faint farewells:

The homing sloops are sheltered in the slip:
The silence deepens; and up-stream, afar,
A fading lantern on an anchored ship
Seems a lost star.





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