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Docks

by Carl Sandburg, 1916

Strolling along
 By the teeming docks,
 I watch the ships put out.
 Black ships that heave and lunge
 And move like mastodons
 Arising from lethargic sleep.

 The fathomed harbor
 Calls them not nor dares
 Them to a strain of action,
 But outward, on and outward,
 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
 To test the challenge of the sea.

 Plunging,
 Doggedly onward plunging,
 Into salt and mist and foam and sun.

Published in Chicago Poems
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