Lake Front at Night / John Gould Fletcher

Lake Front at Night
AT the edge of a beautiful gulf of gloom and stillness The city rises— Glittering with millions of spangles Seen between the dull smoke of the trains, That struggle and tug laboriously And bump empty freight-cars into each other With a noise like surf collapsing. Beyond there is windy darkness— One or two lights low down Seemingly blurred by mist, And waterish stars; For the wind is bringing rain To stream down the spangled faces, And make the light-terraces melt together Growing more dim. But the engines cough and call; One or two lights in the silence Watch the night shutting slowly down dark doors on the city. Behind her spangled mask She frowns a little, standing more weary, But still casting out on the darkness Her glory, where winds will whirl it Through dry splinters of grass on the dunes.