in the
    close-pack’d square,
The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring, The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line,
    the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,
The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the
    hooks and ladders and their execution,
The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors
    if the fire smoulders under them,
The crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows; The forger at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him, The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer, The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the
    edge with his thumb,
The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket; The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also, The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers, The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice, The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
The antique European warrior with his axe in combat, The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head, The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe
    thither,
The siege of revolted lieges determin’d for liberty,
The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce
    and parley,
The sack of an old city in its time,
The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the
    gripe of brigands,
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing, The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds, The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,
The power of personality just or unjust.

     4
Muscle and pluck forever! 
What invigorates life invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the
    delicatesse of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.

What do you think endures? 
Do you think a great city endures? 
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the
    best built steamships? 
Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d’oeuvres of engineering,
    forts, armaments?

Away! these are not to be cherish’d for themselves,
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them,
The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the
    whole world.