If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city ...more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Failing to divide its social chromosomes and split up into new cells, each bearing some portion of the original inheritance, the c...ity continues to grow inorganically, indeed cancerously, by a continuous breaking down of old tissues, and an overgrowth of formless new tissue. Here the city has absorbed villages and little towns, reducing them to place names, like Manhattanville and Harlem in New York; there it has, more happily, left the organs of local government and the vestiges of an independent life, even assisted their revival, as in Chelsea and Kensington in London; but it has nevertheless enveloped those areas in its physical organization and built up the open land that once served to ensure their identity and integrity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New York ... appeared to us ... a lovely and a noble city.... I think New York one of the finest cities I ever saw, and as much su...perior to every other in the Union, (Philadelphia not excepted), as London to Liverpool, or Paris to Rouen. Its advantages of position are, perhaps, unequalled any where. Situated on an island, which I think it will one day cover, it rises, like Venice, from the sea, and like that fairest of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth.... I think it covers nearly as much ground as Paris, but is much less thickly peopled. The extreme point is fortified towards the sea by a battery, and forms an admirable point of defence; but in these piping days of peace, it is converted into a public promenade, and one more beautiful, I should suppose, no city could boast.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Strong be thy wallis that about the standis; Wise be the people that within the dwellis;... Fresh is thy ryver with his lusty strandis; Blith be thy chirches, wele sownyng be thy bellis; Riche be thy merchauntis in substance that excellis Fair be thy wives, right lovesom, white and small; Clere be thy virgyns, lusty under kellis: London, thou art the flour of Cities all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
London, thou art of townes A per se. Soveraign of cities, semeliest in sight,... Of high renoun, riches, and royaltie; Of lordis, barons, and many goodly knyght; Of most delectable lusty ladies bright; Of famous prelatis in habitis clericall; Of merchauntis full of substaunce and myght: London, thou art the flour of Cities allLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion city of our God! He, whose word cannot be broken, Form'd for thee his own abode: .../>On the rock of ages founded, What can shake thy sure repose? With salvation's walls surrounded Thou may'st smile at all thy foes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. M...y subject is city life--with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an... urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I journeyed to London, to the timekept City, Where the River flows, with foreign flotations.... There I was told: we have too many churches, And too few chop-houses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Unreal city, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,... A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »