Here Is New York

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive. At the feet of the tallest and plushest offices lie the crummiest slums. From liuxuepaper.com.

The genteel mysteries housed in the Riverside Church are only a few blocks from the voodoo charms of Harlem. The merchant princes, riding to Wall Street in their limousines down the East River Drive, pass within a few hundred yards of the gypsy kings; but the princes do not know they are passing the kings, and the kings are not up yet anyway—they live a more leisurely life than the princes and get drunk more consistently.

----E.B.White

这就是纽约-参考作文地带提供中文翻译：

一首诗言简意赅，并且富有韵律，则意义更为丰富。纽约城就像一首诗，它把所有的生活、所有的人和种族都聚集在一个小岛上，也富有音律，并且用内燃机来伴奏。曼哈顿岛无疑是地球上人口最集中的地方，这首诗的神奇之处对于数百万常驻居民来说很容易知晓，但它的完整意义将一直蒙着面纱。最高最豪华的写字楼下是最卑贱的贫民窟。里弗赛德教堂中神圣的宗教仪式与哈勒姆伏都教的符咒只隔几个街区。商界王子们驾驶他们的大型豪华轿车沿东河车道驶向华尔街，经过几百英尺以内的吉普赛国王们；但是王子们不知道自己经过了国王，而国王们也并没有起床——他们比起王子们，过着一种更加悠闲的生活，更加经常性的饮酒作乐。