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 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! A MARCH IN THE RANKS HARD-PREST, AND THE ROAD UNKNOWN A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown, A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness, Our army foil'd with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating, Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building, We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building, 'Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital, Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made, Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps, And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke, By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down, At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death (he is shot in the abdomen), I stanch the blood temporarily (the youngster's face is white as a lily), Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o'er the scene fain to absorb it all, Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead, Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odour of blood, The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill'd, Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating, An occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or calls, The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches, These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odour, Then hear outside the orders given, _Fall in, my men, fall in_;