I will not toy with it nor bend an inch.
Deep in the secret chambers of my heart
I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch
I bear it nobly as I live my part.
My being would be a skeleton, a shell,
If this dark Passion that fills my every mood,
And makes my heaven in the white world's hell,
Did not forever feed me vital blood.
I see the mighty city through a mist—
The strident trains that speed the goaded mass,
The poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed,
The fortressed port through which the great ships pass,
Notice that mist hangs a filter of whiteness between the scenery and the viewer. According to  critic Felipe Smith: 
 Only the hate engendered in the poet by the city’s callous disregard keeps him alive, keeps him from being drained, and, because that hatred is an ever renewing source of energy, his death-in-life is eternal. McKay captures that simultaneous exclusion and enclosure in the image of the city veiled by a “mist.” Thus his failed “inventory” leads to a perversely gratifying hatred of that which he can see dimly through the veil of whiteness but never seemingly possess.
The White City