City Topics

It is sometimes called the city of Magnificent Distances, but it might with greater propriety be termed the city of Magnificent Intentions.... Spacious avenues, that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere; streets, mile-long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants; public buildings that need but a public to be complete; and ornaments of great thoroughfares, which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament—are its leading features.
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

A city on whom plenty held full hand,
For riches strewed herself even in her streets;
Whose towers bore heads so high they kissed the clouds,
And strangers ne’er beheld but wondered at.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)