An American Essay

City 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 facades 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 any thing,
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!

Long, too long, O land,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful, you learn'd from  
 joys and prosperity only;
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish—ad- 
 vancing, grappling with direst fate, and recoiling  
 not;
And now to conceive, and show to the world, what your  
 children en-masse really are;
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your  
 children en-masse really are?)

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,
On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching.

The sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere, 
The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the People, 
(Full well they know that message in the darkness, 
Full well return, respond within their breasts, their brains, the sad reverberations,) 
The passionate toll and clang - city to city, joining, sounding, passing,
Those heart-beats of a Nation in the night.