"New York, thy name's delirium" ("Owed to New York," 1906)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

I don't know if Fred has this one, but I spotted it in another quotation  
collection. It was written 100 years ago and is quite amusing.
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_http://www.barrypopik.com/article/1648/new-york-thy-names-delirium-owed-to-ne
w-york_ 
(http://www.barrypopik.com/article/1648/new-york-thy-names-delirium-owed-to-new-york) 
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New York, thy name's Delirium ("Owed to New York")
Byron Rufus Newton wrote “New York, thy name’s Delirium” as the last line of 
 his “Owed to New York.” He wrote the satirical poem as a reporter of the 
New  York Herald in 1906.
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13 March 1907,  Kansas City Evening Times, pg. 8:
“Crazed by avarice, lust and rum,  New York, thy name’s delirium.”
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31 August 1915, Stevens Point  (WI) Daily Journal, pg. 3:
One of Byron R. Newton’s poems has been  printed and reprinted. he was a 
reporter on a great New York paper and he had  witnessed the results of a great 
tragedy. he thought on the tragic event and  then on the carelessness of the 
joyous crowds all unheeding of the sore troubles  and the heartbreaks about them. 
Some people have said it is an awful poem. It is  strong and very likely 
awful, but it is doubtful if its truth is overdrawn. Here  it is: 
ODE TO NEW YORK. 
Vulgar of Manner, overfed,
Overdressed and underbred,
Heartless,  Godless, hell’s delight,
Rude by day, and lewd by night;
Bedwarfed the  man, o’ergrown the brute,
Ruled by boss and prostitute,
Purple robed and  pauper clad
Raving, rotting, money mad;
A squirming herd in Mammon’s  mesh,
A wilderness of human flesh;
Crazed with avarice, lust and  rum,
New York, thy name’s delirium.
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24 September 1917,  Kansas City Star, pg. 14, col. 2:
POLITICIAN AND POET,  TOO.
New York Recalls Bitter Verses of the
New Port  Collector.
>From the New York Sun. 
If Byron Rufus Newton is nominated and confirmed as collector of this port to 
 succeed Dudley Field Malone, who resigned for reasons of conscience, New York
’s  custom house will not be the first establishment of the sort which has 
sheltered  an eminent man of letters. It will be remembered that Nathaniel 
Hawthorne served  three years as surveyor of the port of Salem, Mass. 
We violate no confidence and we correct many misapprehensions when we  
definitely attribute to the Hon. Byron Rufus Newton the authorship of the  immortal “
Owed to New York, a production in which it seems that both the  vitriolic 
spirit of Juvenal and the reckless genius of that other unterrified  poet for 
whom Byron Newton himself was named had collaborated with him on this  occasion. 
The subjoined lines in celebration of this metropolis have been  inaccurately 
credited to other writers: 
Vulgar of manners, overfed,
Overdressed and underbred,
Heartless,  Godless, hell’s delight,
Rude by day and lewd yb night,
Bedwarfed the man,  o’ergrown the brute,
Ruled by Boss intent on loot;
Purple robed and pauper  clad,
Raving, rotting, money mad;
A squirming herd of Mammon’s mesh,
A  wilderness of human flesh;
Crazed with avarice, lust and rum,
New York,  thy name’s delirium! 
A custom house does not strike the imagination as altogether the most  
favorable place for the cultivation of the muses; but the circumstance that  during 
Hawthorne’s occupancy of the federal building at Salem he produced his  
masterpiece, “The Scarlet Letter,” warrants high expectations of the Hon. Byron  
Rufus Newton’s pen if he should come to Bowling Green to take possession of the  
desk so conscientiously vacated by the Hon. Dudley Field  Malone.
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22 February 1925, New York Times, pg.  BR28:
“New York, a Pandemonium”
PIERCE—I would like to have the  satire on New York City by the criminal 
lawyer Delphin Delmas, the last line of  which is “New York, thy name is 
pandemonium.”
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31 October 1926,  New York Times, pg. BR35:
“New York
JOHN L. PORTER,  Pittsburgh, Pa.—M. S. asks in your issue of Sept. 12 for the 
brief poem about  New York, which was written by Byron R. Newton in 1906 and 
delivered on the  occasion of the annual dinner of The New York Herald. The 
title of the poem is  “Owed to New York,” as follows: 
Vulgar in manner, overfed,
Over-dressed and under-bred,
Heartless,  Godless, Hell’s delight,
Rude by day and lewd by night;
Bedwarfed the man,  enlarged the brute,
Ruled by Jew and prostitute.
Purple robed and pauper  clad.
Raving, rotten, money mad,
A squirming herd in mammon’s mesh,
A  wilderness of human flesh,
Crazed by avarice, lust and rum,
“NEW YORK” thy  name is DELIRIUM. 
Samuel Schwarzberg, New York, writes that the author of the poem was at one  
time Collector of the Port of New York. A number of readers answered this 
query,  not a few of whom sent in the poem and interesting (Pg. 37—ed.) data about 
it,  but we have not space to print it. Several of the best letters have been 
sent to  our correspondent. We published a full account of this poem in these 
columns of  March 22, 1925. 
Mr. Newton, the author of the poem, is at present in business in New York, so 
 many readers tell us.
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24 December 1961, New York Times  “New York, Thy Name’s Delirium” by Jacob 
K. Javits, pg. SM9:
Vulgar in  manner, overfed,
Over-dressed and underbred,
Heartless, Godless, Hell’s  delight,
Rude by day and lewd by night…
Purple-robed and  pauper-clad.
Raving, rotten, money-mad,
A squirming herd in Mammon’s  mesh,
A wilderness of human flesh,
Crazed with avarice, lust and  rum,
New York, thy name’s Delirium.—BYRON RUFUS NEWTON. 
WHEN Byron Rufus Newton wrote those words in 1906 as a reporter for The New  
York Herald, he was writing with such tongue-in-cheek that he decided to title 
 it “Owed to New York.” But many New Yorkers took him seriously. Indeed, 
thirteen  years later, when he was appointed Collector of Customs for the Port of 
New York  his poetry brought demands that he be ousted from the post, until 
he  demonstrated that it was all in good humor.
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6 December 1970,  New York Times, pg. 119:
Rushing hordes, honking horns and speeded-up  revolving doors are the 
familiar distilled cliches of essential New York.
It  was the city’s peculiar quality of time that led Christopher Morley to 
call the  place “the nation’s thyroid gland.” And it led a man named Byron 
Rufus Newton to  write some doggerel ending with these lines: “crazed with 
avarice, lust and rum/  New York, thy name’s delirium.”
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20 July 1975, New York  Times, “Architecture View” by Ada Louise Huxtable, 
pg. D23:
Perhaps  the unforgivable sin of this troubled city, to outsiders, is its 
refusal to take  itself too seriously. New York, thy name is irreverence and 
hyperbole. And  grandeur.

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