Explore "Evening on the Potomac" by Bliss Carman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The fervid breath of our flushed Southern May / Is sweet upon the city's throat and lips, / As a lover's whose tired arm slips / Listlessly over the shoulder of a queen.
Far away / The river melts in the unseen. / Oh, beautiful Girl-City, how she dips / Her feet in the stream / With a touch that is half a kiss and half a dream! / Her face is very fair, / With flowers for smiles and sunlight in her hair.
My westland flower-town, how serene she is! / Here on this hill from which I look at her, / All is still as if a worshipper / Left at some shrine his offering.
Soft winds kiss / My cheek with a slow lingering. / A luring whisper where the laurels stir / Wiles my heart back to woodland-ward again.
But lo, / Across the sky the sunset couriers run, / And I remain / To watch the imperial pageant of the Sun / Mock me, an impotent Cortez here below, / With splendors of its vaster Mexico.
O Eldorado of the templed clouds! / O golden city of the western sky! / Not like the Spaniard would I storm thy gates; / Not like the babe stretch chubby hands and cry
To have thee for a toy; but far from crowds, / Like my Faun brother in the ferny glen, / Peer from the wood's edge while thy glory waits, / And in the darkening thickets plunge again.