Collected poems by Vachel Lindsay :: :: University of Virginia Library

Now, in the night, all music haunts us here ...
Is it for nothing heaven cracks and yawns
And the tremendous amaranth descends,
Loaded with glory of ten thousand dawns?

The amaranth means:—God would have us say:—
“Whether you will or no, O city young,
Heaven will bloom like one great flower for you:
Flash and loom greatly, all your streets among.”

Friend, I will not stop hoping, though you mourn.
We see such flowers, and some of them shall come,
Though now our streets are jazzed, or sadly grey,
And though our boys are strident now, or dumb.

Friend, that flower-town, that wonder town shall come,
Naught can prevent it. Though it may not be
What we may plan, it comes, at last—we know
With streets like channels of an incense sea,—

With twilight mists from heaven's jungles deep,
Or where the butterfly's great soul
Still floats asleep—
Beneath great heaven's granite steep;—
It comes, at last we know,
With musical bells, from the great western tree,
From the far star, or golden maids that come
From Eve's great eastern palace of the sky
Where great golden wonders never die.