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William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Washington

THE WHITE-WALLED Rome of an unwritten epic,

Spreading like the waters of a new well run;

Drinking at the lips of a clear green river

Rising in the fountains and the wells of the sun!

Nothing of imperial dust in her cellars,

Nothing of the torn old tower and dome;

Mistress of her clean white halls unhaunted—

City of the sunrise, altar, and home!

City of the sunrise hills unhaunted

By the skulls of kings and the ribs of decay;

Seeded in the earth like a clean deep tap-root—

The granite in the oak of her boughs today!

A white ship built in a cool green forest

And launched with the green leaves fresh on her bow,

Sun on her sails and foam on her anchors,

Halfway out on her maiden trip now!

The clean new Rome of an unwritten epic,

Spreading to the borders of a universal dream;

A white ship launched on a universal river,

Steering for the sun at the mouth of the stream!

The Nation