Explore "The Gate of Peace" by Bliss Carman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ah, who will build the city of our dream, / Where beauty shall abound and truth avail, / With patient love that is too wise for strife, / Blending in power as gentle as the rain / With the reviving earth on full spring days? / Who now will speed us to its gate of peace, / And reassure us on our doubtful road?
Three centuries ago a fearless man, / Yearning to set his people in the way, / Threw all his royal might into a plan / To found an ideal city that should give / Freedom to every instinct for the best, / From humblest impulse in his own domain / To rumored wisdom from the world's far ends. / Strengthened with ardor from a high resolve, / Beneath the patient smile of Indian skies / This fair dream flourished for a score of years, / Until the blight of evil touched its bloom / With fading, and transformed its vivid life / Into a ghost-flower of its fair design.