| Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917. | | | | City of Ships | | By Walt Whitman |
| | | 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;) | 5 |
| 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—meddlesome, mad, extravagant city! | |
| Spring up, O city—not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike! | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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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