Father Pitt

Why should the beautiful die?


The City of a Dream

Pittsburgh skyline seen from St. Mary’s Cemetery, Kennedy Township
Fujifilm FinePix HS10, with an imitation Tri-X Pan filter applied.

As some vast heart that high in health
   Beats in its mighty breast,
So, to and fro, thy living wealth
   Throbs through the boundless West.
Thy keels the broad Ohio plow,
   Or seek the Atlantic main;
Thy fabrics find the Arctic snow,
   Or reach Zahara’s plain!

Toil on, huge Cyclop as thou art,
   Though grimed with dust and smoke,
And breathing with convulsive start—
   There’s music in each stroke!
What if the stranger smirch and soil
   Upon thy forehead sees?
Better the wealth of honest toil
   Than of ignoble ease!

And yet thou’rt beautiful—a queen
   Throned on her royal seat!
All glorious in emerald sheen,
   Where thy fair waters meet.
And when the night comes softly down,
   And the moon lights the stream,
In the mild ray appears the town,
   The city of a dream!

——“Pittsburgh” by E. M. Sidney in Graham’s American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art, Vol. XXX (1847), p. 249.

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