Tales of Three Hemispheres
Page 11
A CITY OF WONDER
Past the upper corner of a precipice the moon rode into view. Nighthad for some while now hooded the marvelous city. They had planned itto be symmetrical, its maps were orderly, near; in two dimensions,that is length and breadth, its streets met and crossed each otherwith regular exactitude, with all the dullness of the science of man.The city had laughed as it were and shaken itself free and in thethird dimension had soared away to consort with all the careless,irregular things that know not man for their master.
Yet even there, even at those altitudes, man had still clung to hissymmetry, still claimed that these mountains were houses; in orderlyrows the thousand windows stood watching each other precisely, allorderly, all alike, lest any should guess by day that there might bemystery here. So they stood in the daylight. The sun set, still theywere orderly, as scientific and regular as the labour of only man andthe bees. The mists darken at evening. And first the WoolworthBuilding goes away, sheer home and away from any allegiance to man, totake his place among mountains; for I saw him stand with the lowerslopes invisible in the gloaming, while only his pinnacles showed upin the clearer sky. Thus only mountains stand.
Still all the windows of the other buildings stood in their regularrows--all side by side in silence, not yet changed, as though waitingone furtive moment to step from the schemes of man, to slip back tomystery and romance again as cats do when they steal on velvet feetaway from familiar hearths in the dark of the moon.
Night fell, and the moment came. Someone lit a window, far up anothershone with its orange glow. Window by window, and yet not nearly all.Surely if modern man with his clever schemes held any sway here stillhe would have turned one switch and lit them all together; but we areback with the older man of whom far songs tell, he whose spirit is kinto strange romances and mountains. One by one the windows shine fromthe precipices; some twinkle, some are dark; man's orderly schemeshave gone, and we are amongst vast heights lit by inscrutable beacons.
I have seen such cities before, and I have told of them in _The Bookof Wonder_.
Here in New York a poet met a welcome.