Explore "The Beautiful City" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Beautiful City! Forever / Its rapturous praises resound; / We fain would behold it -- but never / A glimpse of its dory is found: / We slacken our lips at the tender / White breasts of our mothers to hear / Of its marvellous beauty and splendor -- ; / We see -- but the gleam of a tear!
Yet never the story may tire us -- / First graven in symbols of stone -- / Rewritten on scrolls of papyrus / And parchment, and scattered and blown / By the winds of the tongues of all nations, / Like a litter of leaves wildly whirled / Down the rack of a hundred translations, / From the earliest lisp of the world.