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"Fair city of the sun, laved by the blue seas, glowing like a topaz within a setting of dark cradling streets, that rose tier on tier around it."—Whitaker's impression of the Exposition received upon entering the Golden Gate from the sea.
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The creamy surface of the tower of jewels is studded with 125,000 great glass jewels made in Austria and safely landed in this country, which with the floods of light diffusing from concealed sources, creates an illumination that is peculiarly impressive against the background of the night's sky and often makes the Exposition grounds lighter by day than by night.
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If Whitman was right when he said "dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sunrise out of me," then we do not exaggerate in saying that the sunlight has partly spoken through the builders of the Jewel City.
THE JEWEL CITY
Mystically inspired,
Amazingly patient, tireless suppliants for the vision
You have caught the ray of a true, a far distant light.
And these palaces and pillars let them crumble when they their days have fulfilled.
For in mind and in soul you have agonized and struggled,
Until triumphantly you have evoked the very stones into utterance.
And through that which decays you have spoken the eternal and the undecaying thought.
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