I want to go to the man who quickens me; I want the gift of life, the flame of his spirit eating along the tinder of my heart; I want to feel the flood-gates within flung open and the tides pouring through me; I want to take what I am and bring it to fruit. Quicken me, and I will grow; Touch me with flame, and the blossoms will open and the fruit appear. Call forth in me a creator, and the god will answer. And then, if I commit what you call a sin, Better so. It will not be a sin. It will be a mere breaking of your patterns; For the only sin is death, and the only virtue to be altogether alive and your own authentic self. _Century_ _James Oppenheim_ NEW YORK Sea-rimmed and teeming with millions poured out on thy granite shore Surge upon surge, many-nationed, O City far-famed for the roar Of thy cavernous iron streets and thy towers half hung in the sun, Rising in layer on layer, twelve cities piled upon one, All feeding and sleeping and breeding, enormous, half palace, half den, With ever a tide washing through thee whose clamoring waters are men, O where is the hand of thy builder? What god, canst thou tell, Hath his hand on the clay of thy face? Or what demon from Hell? I have viewed with the eye of the stranger and the pride of the New World man The mountainous leap of thy glory, the miles of thy endless span, And my heart has gone up with thy towers and my love has fallen as dew On thy night-blooming lamps in rows on thy beautiful Avenue. I have stood with a seaman’s glass on the roofs of thy high hotels; I have rolled through the sheer ravines where the cliff dweller dwells; I have peered from the place of the Tomb far up where the hills break free And the length of the lordly River comes down as a bride to the sea; I have fled with a roar through the rock where the myriad lights flash by; I have heard the song of the soaring steel come down from the sky; I have watched as a lover thy waters all mottled with cloud and with sun Where the ocean comes in to caress thee, O Beautiful One; And the days and the years of my life are a gift unto thee, And I dwell in thy marvelous gates, O Goddess cast up by the sea!