Docks
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.
Docks - context Summary
Published in 1916
Written for Sandburg's 1916 collection Chicago Poems, "Docks" records an urban observer’s encounter with working waterfront life. The speaker watches powerful, animal-like ships leave the harbor and surge toward the open sea. The poem situates industrial movement within a larger natural challenge, blending images of machinery and marine landscape to convey Chicago’s energetic, labor-driven environment and the poet’s realist attention to city work and motion.
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