Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

Of City Flowers

Shaemus O’Sheel

MY city! How the younger poets mock

With present praise thine unrevealèd soul!

Surely with scorn thou hear’st their raptures roll,

Nor will to their small minds thy mind unlock.

Not with such clamoring casuists can I flock;

Black witch who ere my birth my future stole,

With fury that I care not to control

I hate thee and the children of thy stock!

I hate thee and I cry it to the world!

And in return thy uncouth savage love,

O lewd amorphous mystery, I feel!

For when at last thy loftiest towers are hurled

Hell-ward, of all who mourn thy ruins above,

My grief alone, thou knowest, will be real.