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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472353" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Address For The Opening Of The Fifth Avenue Theatre</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">NEW YORK, DECEMBER 3, 1873</div><div style="margin:10px 0">HANG out our banners on the stately tower<br>It dawns at last--the long-expected hour!<br>The steep is climbed, the star-lit summit won,<br>The builder's task, the artist's labor done;<br>Before the finished work the herald stands,<br>And asks the verdict of your lips and hands!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shall rosy daybreak make us all forget<br>The golden sun that yester-evening set?<br>Fair was the fabric doomed to pass away<br>Ere the last headaches born of New Year's Day;<br>With blasting breath the fierce destroyer came<br>And wrapped the victim in his robes of flame;<br>The pictured sky with redder morning blushed,<br>With scorching streams the naiad's fountain gushed,<br>With kindling mountains glowed the funeral pyre,<br>Forests ablaze and rivers all on fire,--<br>The scenes dissolved, the shrivelling curtain fell,--<br>Art spread her wings and sighed a long farewell!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Mourn o'er the Player's melancholy plight,--<br>Falstaff in tears, Othello deadly white,--<br>Poor Romeo reckoning what his doublet cost,<br>And Juliet whimpering for her dresses lost,--<br>Their wardrobes burned, their salaries all undrawn,<br>Their cues cut short, their occupation gone!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Lie there in dust,' the red-winged demon cried,<br>'Wreck of the lordly city's hope and pride!'<br>Silent they stand, and stare with vacant gaze,<br>While o'er the embers leaps the fitful blaze;<br>When, to! a hand, before the startled train,<br>Writes in the ashes, 'It shall rise again,--<br>Rise and confront its elemental foes!'<br>The word was spoken, and the walls arose,<br>And ere the seasons round their brief career<br>The new-born temple waits the unborn year.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ours was the toil of many a weary day<br>Your smiles, your plaudits, only can repay;<br>We are the monarchs of the painted scenes,<br>You, you alone the real Kings and Queens!<br>Lords of the little kingdom where we meet,<br>We lay our gilded sceptres at your feet,<br>Place in your grasp our portal's silvered keys<br>With one brief utterance: We have tried to please.<br>Tell us, ye sovereigns of the new domain,<br>Are you content-or have we toiled in vain?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With no irreverent glances look around<br>The realm you rule, for this is haunted ground!<br>Here stalks the Sorcerer, here the Fairy trips,<br>Here limps the Witch with malice-working lips,<br>The Graces here their snowy arms entwine,<br>Here dwell the fairest sisters of the Nine,--<br>She who, with jocund voice and twinkling eye,<br>Laughs at the brood of follies as they fly;<br>She of the dagger and the deadly bowl,<br>Whose charming horrors thrill the trembling soul;<br>She who, a truant from celestial spheres,<br>In mortal semblance now and then appears,<br>Stealing the fairest earthly shape she can--<br>Sontag or Nilsson, Lind or Malibran;<br>With these the spangled houri of the dance,--<br>What shaft so dangerous as her melting glance,<br>As poised in air she spurns the earth below,<br>And points aloft her heavenly-minded toe!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What were our life, with all its rents and seams,<br>Stripped of its purple robes, our waking dreams?<br>The poet's song, the bright romancer's page,<br>The tinselled shows that cheat us on the stage<br>Lead all our fancies captive at their will;<br>Three years or threescore, we are children still.<br>The little listener on his father's knee,<br>With wandering Sindbad ploughs the stormy sea,<br>With Gotham's sages hears the billows roll<br>(Illustrious trio of the venturous bowl,<br>Too early shipwrecked, for they died too soon<br>To see their offspring launch the great balloon);<br>Tracks the dark brigand to his mountain lair,<br>Slays the grim giant, saves the lady fair,<br>Fights all his country's battles o'er again<br>From Bunker's blazing height to Lundy's Lane;<br>Floats with the mighty captains as they sailed,<br>Before whose flag the flaming red-cross paled,<br>And claims the oft-told story of the scars<br>Scarce yet grown white, that saved the stripes and<br>stars!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Children of later growth, we love the PLAY,<br>We love its heroes, be they grave or gay,<br>From squeaking, peppery, devil-defying Punch<br>To roaring Richard with his camel-hunch;<br>Adore its heroines, those immortal dames,<br>Time's only rivals, whom he never tames,<br>Whose youth, unchanging, lives while thrones decay<br>(Age spares the Pyramids-and Dejazet);<br>The saucy-aproned, razor-tongued soubrette,<br>The blond-haired beauty with the eyes of jet,<br>The gorgeous Beings whom the viewless wires<br>Lift to the skies in strontian-crimsoned fires,<br>And all the wealth of splendor that awaits<br>The throng that enters those Elysian gates.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">See where the hurrying crowd impatient pours,<br>With noise of trampling feet and flapping doors,<br>Streams to the numbered seat each pasteboard fits<br>And smooths its caudal plumage as it sits;<br>Waits while the slow musicians saunter in,<br>Till the bald leader taps his violin;<br>Till the old overture we know so well,<br>Zampa or Magic Flute or William Tell,<br>Has done its worst-then hark! the tinkling bell!<br>The crash is o'er--the crinkling curtain furled,<br>And to! the glories of that brighter world!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Behold the offspring of the Thespian cart,<br>This full-grown temple of the magic art,<br>Where all the conjurers of illusion meet,<br>And please us all the more, the more they cheat.<br>These are the wizards and the witches too<br>Who win their honest bread by cheating you<br>With cheeks that drown in artificial tears<br>And lying skull-caps white with seventy years,<br>Sweet-tempered matrons changed to scolding Kates,<br>Maids mild as moonbeams crazed with murderous hates,<br>Kind, simple souls that stab and slash and slay<br>And stick at nothing, if it 's in the play!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Would all the world told half as harmless lies!<br>Would all its real fools were half as wise<br>As he who blinks through dull Dundreary's eyes I<br>Would all the unhanged bandits of the age<br>Were like the peaceful ruffians of the stage!<br>Would all the cankers wasting town and state,<br>The mob of rascals, little thieves and great,<br>Dealers in watered milk and watered stocks,<br>Who lead us lambs to pasture on the rocks,--<br>Shepherds--Jack Sheppards--of their city flocks,--<br>The rings of rogues that rob the luckless town,<br>Those evil angels creeping up and down<br>The Jacob's ladder of the treasury stairs,--<br>Not stage, but real Turpins and Macaires,--<br>Could doff, like us, their knavery with their clothes,<br>And find it easy as forgetting oaths!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Welcome, thrice welcome to our virgin dome,<br>The Muses' shrine, the Drama's new-found home<br>Here shall the Statesman rest his weary brain,<br>The worn-out Artist find his wits again;<br>Here Trade forget his ledger and his cares,<br>And sweet communion mingle Bulls and Bears;<br>Here shall the youthful Lover, nestling near<br>The shrinking maiden, her he holds most dear,<br>Gaze on the mimic moonlight as it falls<br>On painted groves, on sliding canvas walls,<br>And sigh, 'My angel! What a life of bliss<br>We two could live in such a world as this!'<br>Here shall the timid pedants of the schools,<br>The gilded boors, the labor-scorning fools,<br>The grass-green rustic and the smoke-dried cit,<br>Feel each in turn the stinging lash of wit,<br>And as it tingles on some tender part<br>Each find a balsam in his neighbor's smart;<br>So every folly prove a fresh delight<br>As in the picture of our play to-night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Farewell! The Players wait the Prompter's call;<br>Friends, lovers, listeners! Welcome one and all!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Oliver+Wendell+Holmes">Oliver Wendell Holmes</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=472353" data-title="Address For The Opening Of The Fifth Avenue Theatre de Oliver Wendell Holmes" data-description="NEW YORK, DECEMBER 3, 1873

HANG out our banners on the stately tower
It dawns at last--the long-expected hour!
The steep is climbed, the star-lit summit won,
The builder's task, the artist's labor done;
Before the finished work the herald stands,..."></div>
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