- A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign (1914)
- I LOOK on the specious electrical light
- Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white,
- Wickedly red or malignantly green
- Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen.
- Showing, while millions of souls hurry on,
- The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn,
- By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl,
- Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl,
- By maggotry motions in sickening line
- Proclaiming a hat or a soup or a wine,
- While there far above the steep cliffs of the street
- The stars sing a message elusive and sweet.
- Now man cannot rest in his pleasure and toil
- His clumsy contraptions of coil upon coil
- Till the thing he invents, in its use and its range,
- Leads on to the marvelous CHANGE BEYOND CHANGE
- Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies,
- As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise.
- And we shall be lifted, rejoicing by night,
- Till we join with the planets who choir their delight.
- The signs in the street and the signs in the skies
- Shall make me a Zodiac, guiding and wise,
- And Broadway make one with that marvelous stair
- That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer.
- Vachel Lindsay
