The curtain is going up on that battlesmoked, Crowded third act which is to decide this war And yet not end it for years. Turn your eyes away From these chiefs and captains, put them back in their books. Let the armies sleep like bears in a hollow cave. War is an iron screen in front of a time, With pictures smoked upon it in red and black, Some gallant enough, some deadly, but all intense. We look at the pictures, thinking we know the time, We only know the screen. Look behind it now At the great parti-colored quilt of these patchwork States. This part and that is vexed by a battle-worm, But the ploughs go ahead, the factory chimneys smoke, A new age curdles and boils in a hot steel cauldron And pours into rails and wheels and fingers of steel, Steel is being born like a white-hot rose In the dark smoke-cradle of Pittsburg⁠— a man with a crude Eye of metal and crystal looks at a smear On a thin glass plate and wonders⁠—