I SPREAD MY GORGEOUS SAIL

I spread my gorgeous sail
Upon a starless sea
And o’er the deep with a chilly gale
My painted bark sailed fast & free –

Old Ocean shook his waves
Beneath the roaring wind,
But the little keel of the mariner braves
The foaming abyss, & the midnight blind.

The ornament darkened overhead,
Below, the surges swelled, –
My bark ran low in the watery bed,
As the tempest breath its course compelled.

I took my silver lyre,
And waked its voice on high; –
The wild blasts were hushed to admire,
And the stars looked out from the charmed sky.

Bear me then, ye wild waters,
To Apollo’s Delphian isle,
My name is Music, in Castalie known,
Where bowers of joy the Nine beguile.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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!

Walt Whitman

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