Read "New York at Night" by Amy Lowell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A near horizon whose sharp jags / Cut brutally into a sky / Of leaden heaviness, and crags / Of houses lift their masonry / Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie / And snort, outlined against the gray / Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh / The goaded city gives, not day / Nor night can ease her heart, her anguished labours stay.
Below, straight streets, monotonous, / From north and south, from east and west, / Stretch glittering; and luminous / Above, one tower tops the rest / And holds aloft man's constant quest: / Time! Joyless emblem of the greed / Of millions, robber of the best / Which earth can give, the vulgar creed / Has seared upon the night its flaming ruthless screed.
O Night! Whose soothing presence brings / The quiet shining of the stars.
O Night! Whose cloak of darkness clings / So intimately close that scars / Are hid from our own eyes. Beggars / By day, our wealth is having night / To burn our souls before altars / Dim and tree-shadowed, where the light / Is shed from a young moon, mysteriously bright.
Where art thou hiding, where thy peace? / This is the hour, but thou art not.
Will waking tumult never cease? / Hast thou thy votary forgot? / Nature forsakes this man-begot / And festering wilderness, and now / The long still hours are here, no jot / Of dear communing do I know; / Instead the glaring, man-filled city groans below!