Evening On The Potomac.

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.