O, wonder of our age!
Consummate wonder, not of state alone, but of our land,
Unique among the cities dost thou stand
Upon the page
Of history, in youth and might!
Thou didst spring forth as in a night,
From where the redman roved
Along the dreamy shores of Michigan,
Where four-score years ago
Thy life began;
Some fairy moved
Her wand upon thee,
For like a fabled urban didst thou grow.
Colossal mart,
Of commerce, like the heart
Thou sendest out through arteries and veins
Pulsating life into the world;
Napoleons of business-brains
Are marshalling their forces,
With colors high unfurled,
Not on war-harnessed horses,
To madly fight,
To kill and blight,
But to employ each pow’r
To make thee stronger, better every newborn hour.
Thy mighty citadels of stone,
So huge, so tall,
So many and immense,
That with their burden mother earth seems groan,
Throb with a life intense,
And from thy canyons, we call streets,
Great traffic’s constant roar us meets.
Great is thy wealth,
Great is thy woe,
Less great thy health,
But great is its foe;
Within thy pale the great extremes
Of good and evil dwell:
Felicities of heavenly dreams,
And hopelessness of hell:
Above thy scum of things
The voice of heaven sings.