@3No Roebling reared that primal way With web of steel and splendid line; Its piers were rubble, crude and gray, Its beams were hewn of forest pine. Across the kill that eastward flowed It led, unjarred by rumbling tram, Where grasses waved and lilies glowed; New York was then Nieuw Amsterdam. With rake and scythe at droop of day, With lilt and carol full and free, The maids and younkers hold their way Along the shadowed Bouwerie. A playful whisper stirs the trees, A laughing ripple rills the shoal, For here, as village law decrees, The sweetest lips must pay the toll. Good Saint that loved our isle, restore That hallowed bridge, to span a tide With blowing fields on either shore; Let me be there with one beside! Dispel this cloud of stone and steel, These clogging mists of tawdry sham! Let lips be frank and hearts be leal As then in old Nieuw Amsterdam!@1 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CITY ROOFS by CHARLES HANSON TOWNE THE BRIDE'S TRAGEDY by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES THE RURAL PIPE by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON THE WORLD PLAY by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON THE MAN OF THE MARNE by BLISS CARMAN |