Whitman.

I brought my new friends to Brooklyn the other day, at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge in the shadow of two massive monuments, the bridge itself and Walt Whitman's newspaper the Brooklyn Eagle. The Fulton Ferry Landing is quiet anymore to the traffic of steamboats, but alive with New Yorkers, Americans, and international travelers longing for the view. The new fences that try to hold this humanity back from the East River are wisely adorned with Walt Whitman's words, our greatest poet I think, our American myth-maker. The myth of cities never so clearly rendered throughout the centuries, Ur, Cairo, Athens, Rome, Constantinople, have never been glorified and rarified so tenderly and courageously as Whitman tenders New York City. Read his stirring words as I did again on the fence just the other day, and get a glimpse of why we love the idea of city where every single corner and every single moment vibrates with possibility:

Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me;
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!—stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes it!