City of Ships
City of Ships - fact Summary
Included in Leaves of Grass
Whitman celebrates New York as a bustling, maritime metropolis whose population and goods come from "all the lands of the earth." The poem embraces the city’s diversity, commerce, and restless energy, claiming an uncritical love for its contradictions. What begins as a gleeful hymn to the wharves and tides turns into a bold, confrontational tone that declares energetic action rather than quiet repose—Whitman incarnates and urges the city’s own vigor.
Read Complete AnalysesCITY of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful, sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!) City of the world! (for all races are here; All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out, with eddies and foam! City of wharves and stores! city of tall façades of marble and iron! Proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city! Spring up, O city! not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike! Fear not! submit to no models but your own, O city! Behold me! incarnate me, as I have incarnated you! I have rejected nothing you offer’d me—whom you adopted, I have adopted; Good or bad, I never question you—I love all—I do not condemn anything; I chant and celebrate all that is yours—yet peace no more; In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine; War, red war, is my song through your streets, O city!
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