Classic Poem

An oval opal, shining in the mist,
Set amid battlements which, like a dream,
Some fairy palace guarding close would seem.
Shot through with azure and with amethyst,
You rise a beacon, by the breezes kissed,
Incarnate of the heights that would redeem,
Forever beckoning, wooing, as the gleam
In longing eyes that wait at some dear tryst.
Like a mirage in fever-fetid lands
Luring the traveller from the heat accursed,
You seem a magic thing not built with hands,
But moulded to allay our vision's thirst.
Above the sullen city's sordid slime
You point us upward to the far sublime!