Up in the heights of the evening skies I see my City of Cities
float
In sunset's golden read more

Up in the heights of the evening skies I see my City of Cities
float
In sunset's golden and crimson dyes: I look and a great joy
clutches my throat!
Plateau of roofs by canyons crossed: windows by thousands
fire-furled--
O gazing, how the heart is lost in the Deepest City in the World.

George Washington, with his right art upraised, sits his iron
horse at the lower corner of Union Square. . read more

George Washington, with his right art upraised, sits his iron
horse at the lower corner of Union Square. . . . Should the
General raise his left hand as he has raised his right, it would
point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the
oppressed and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of
national or personal freedom they have found refuge here, and the
patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their
district, while he listens through his left ear to vaudeville
that caricatures the posterity of the proteges.

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken read more

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs
lining deep gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous;
some lay in long, monotonous rows like, the basalt precipices
hanging over desert canons. Such was the background of the
wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city.
But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant
parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many
colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended
like the city's soul, sound and odors and thrills that make up
the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained,
of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There
below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from
the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill,
enrich, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of
it came up to him and went into his blood.

New York's such a wonderful city. Although I was at the library today. The guys are very rude. I said, read more

New York's such a wonderful city. Although I was at the library today. The guys are very rude. I said, "I'd like a card." He says, "You have to prove you're a citizen of New York." So I stabbed him.

New York is the Caoutchouc City. . . . They have the furor
rubberendi.

New York is the Caoutchouc City. . . . They have the furor
rubberendi.

Lo! body and soul!--this land!
Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and
The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the read more

Lo! body and soul!--this land!
Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and
The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships;
The varied and ample land,--the South
And the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.
- Walt Whitman,

Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they read more

Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that nothing of
pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely
forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the
lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a
different simile would have been wiser. Still nobody should take
offence. We would call nobody a lobster with good and sufficient
claws.

Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, read more

Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.

Stream of the living world
Where dash the billows of strife!--
One plunge in the mighty torrent
read more

Stream of the living world
Where dash the billows of strife!--
One plunge in the mighty torrent
Is a year of tamer life!
City of glorious days,
Of hope, and labour and mirth,
With room and to spare, on thy splendid bays
For the ships of all the earth!