| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916. |
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| 125. Docks |
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| STROLLING along | |
| By the teeming docks, | |
| I watch the ships put out. | |
| Black ships that heave and lunge | |
| And move like mastodons | 5 |
| Arising from lethargic sleep. | |
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| The fathomed harbor | |
| Calls them not nor dares | |
| Them to a strain of action, | |
| But outward, on and outward, | 10 |
| Sounding low-reverberating calls, | |
| Shaggy in the half-lit distance, | |
| They pass the pointed headland, | |
| View the wide, far-lifting wilderness | |
| And leap with cumulative speed | 15 |
| To test the challenge of the sea. | |
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| Plunging, | |
| Doggedly onward plunging, | |
| Into salt and mist and foam and sun. | |
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