I know not if it was a dream. I viewed A city where the restless multitude, Between the eastern and the western deep Had roared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude. Colossal palaces crowned every height; Towers from valleys climbed into the light; O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes Hung in the blue, barbarically bright. But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day Touched the black masses with a grace of gray, Dim spires of temples to the nation's God Studding high spaces of the wide survey. Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep, Yet whispered of an hour-when sleepers wake, The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep. The gardens greened upon the builded hills Above the tethered thunders of the mills With sleeping wheels unstirred to service yet By the tamed torrents and the quickened rills. A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space, Looked on the builder's blocks about his base And bared his wounded breast in sign to say: "Strike! 't is my destiny to lodge your race. "'T was but a breath ago the mammoth browsed Upon my slopes, and in my caves I housed Your shaggy fathers in their nakedness, While on their foeman's offal they caroused." Ships from afar afforested the bay. Within their huge and chambered bodies lay The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed The hardy argosies to far Cathay. Beside the city of the living spread— Strange fellowship!—the city of the dead; And much I wondered what its humble folk, To see how bravely they were housed, had said. Noting how firm their habitations stood, Broad-based and free of perishable wood— How deep in granite and how high in brass The names were wrought of eminent and good, I said: "When gold or power is their aim, The smile of beauty or the wage of shame, Men dwell in cities; to this place they fare When they would conquer an abiding fame." From the red East the sun—a solemn rite— Crowned with a flame the cross upon a height Above the dead; and then with all his strength Struck the great city all aroar with light!

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  God said: "Let there be Man," and from the clay
  Adam came forth and, thoughtful, walked away.
  The matrix whence his body was obtained,
  An empty, man-shaped cavity, remained
  All unregarded from that early time
  Till in a recent storm it filled with slime.
  Now Satan, envying the Master's power
  To make the meat himself could but devour,
  Strolled to the place and, standing by the pool,
  Exerted all his will to make a fool.
  A miracle!—from out that ancient hole
  Rose Morehouse, lacking nothing but a soul.
  "To give him that I've not the power divine,"
  Said Satan, sadly, "but I'll lend him mine."
  He breathed it into him, a vapor black,
  And to this day has never got it back.