Poetry Archives

I

The bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln
     Park
Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr
     by in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment
     for dinner and matinees and buying and selling
Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling
On the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near by
I have seen the general dare the combers come closer
And make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs
     and guns of the storm.

 II

I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow
     is falling.
Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow,
     his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the newsies
     crying forty thousand men are dead along the
     Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar
     of the city at his bronze feet.
A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with
     long legs in bronze, Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they
     hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their
     pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight
     and into the dawn.