from Give Me The Splendid, Silent Sun

Keep your splendid, silent sun;                                   

Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods;
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and
        orchards;
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and
        endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers
        by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every
        day!
Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of
       the trumpets and drums!
(The soldiers in companies or regiments—some, starting away, flush'd
        and reckless;
Some, their time up, returning, with thinn'd ranks—young, yet very
        old, worn, marching, noticing nothing                     

—Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black
        ships!
O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-
        light procession!
The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons
        following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants;
Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating
        drums, as now;
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even
        the sight of the wounded
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus—with varied
        chorus, and light of the sparkling eyes;
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. 

-- Walt Whitman