THE NIGHT THE SEASIDE FUNHOUSE BURNED

The night the seaside funhouse burned
Its fragile timbers grew hard,
Glassy sinews as they twisted,
Bones as they charred,
And rose up in their white shroud
With a heat so intense the fireman turned,
In a trance on the dimly-lighted pier,
To see the heat dance before him and to hear
The rhythm of the crackling planking.

The gypsy was evicted in the fire;
The harried workman watched from afar
Will-o'-the-wisp, the flashes of her silver
In and out among the billowing pillars —
White smoke, night sky, blue attire.

The Swiss clock tower fell into the bay;
The face in the dial slipped whole onto the waves;
To the shallow eddies it rides,
Smiling, smiling;
The Man in the Moon looks up through the tides,
His shining countenance bobs among the pilings.

AN INCIDENT IN NEW YORK HARBOR

A bargeman heard the Statue of Liberty speak;
Once, just once, he saw her bend,
Set her torch upon a peak,
Gather her sheathing, and descend.

No mere display of might,
No calculated show,
Moved Her Stateliness so
To shift her height;

But a whale from the open sea,
With a plea, a pang, a wounded pride —
Rumors of her stature had implied:
There dwelt a creature mightier than he.

"No," said the Statue, "I defer,
And to your greater standard I refer;
Less than the knots of your leviathan span
Are my, mere mortal, statute miles of man."

The whale was soothed, and spouted in content;
The bargeman watched his sleek diminishing back;
Was it a tale the Statue would invent?
A lie to keep the benthic peace intact?

The luminous wake had faded into black;
The Statue turned, retrieved her lamp, and rose,
Resumed her old uncompromising pose,
And let the witness ponder her intent.