The Builders by Berton Braley

Poem - The Builders

Never a jungle is penetrated,
Never an unknown sea is dared,
Never adventure is consummated,
Never a faint new trail is fared,
But that some dreamer has had the vision
Which leads men on to the ends of earth,
That laughs at doubting, and scorns derision,
And falters not at the cynic's mirth.

So the dreamer dreams, but there follows after
The mighty epic of steel and stone,
When caisson, scaffold and well and rafter
Have made a fact where the dream was shown;
And so with furnace and lathe and hammer,
With blast that rumbles and shaft that gleams,
Her factories crowned with a grimy glamour,
Newark buildeth the dreamers dreams.

Where the torrent leaps with a roar of thunder,
Where the bridge is built or the dam is laid,
Where the wet walled tunnel burrows under
Mountain, river and palisade,
There is Newark's magic of nail or girder,
Of spikes and castings and posts and beams,
The need and wants of the world have spurred her,
Newark city that builds our dreams.

She has fashioned tools for the world's rough duty,
For the men who dig and the men that hew,
She has fashioned jewels for wealth and beauty,
She has shod the prince and the pauper, too;
So the dreamer dreams, he's the wonder waker,
With soul that hungers and brain that teems,
But back of him toils the magic-maker,
Newark city that builds his dreams.