James Weldon Johnson’s “My City” is a Petrarchan sonnet, with the common rime scheme ABBACDDC in the octave, and DEDEGG in the sestet. Its claims are surprising and quite opposite from what one would usually expect to find in poem, especially a poem of tribute.
Octave: “When I come down to sleep death's endless night”
In the octave, the speaker asks two questions: one regards his greatest loss after he dies, and the other one makes suggestions about what that loss might be. The speaker’s queries create a drama as he talks to himself about this issue.
The first question asks, “What to me then will be the keenest loss, / When this bright world blurs on my fading sight?” The speaker demonstrates a deep love for the world labeling it “this bright world,” and he shows that he will regret having to leave it. He dramatizes death richly by calling it “sleep death's endless night, / The threshold of the unknown dark to cross.”
The second question then suggests that he might lament being unable to “see the trees,” or he might regret his inability to “smell the flowers,” or perhaps his greatest loss will be that he is incapable of listening to the “singing birds.” He continues by adding two other possible losses, “watch[ing] the flashing streams” or leisurely gazing on the “patient herds.”
The reader will notice that all of these possible losses are things of nature found in a pastoral setting, and remembering that the title of the poem is “My City,” that reader will not be surprised that speaker then answers his question by replying, “No, I am sure it will be none of these.”
Sestet: “But, ah! Manhattan's sights and sounds, her smells”
In the sestet, the speaker exclaims with emphatic, zealous grief that it is “Manhattan” that he will miss most, when he leaves this world. He then lists the attributes that attract him and make him love his city: “Manhattan's sights and sounds, her smells, / Her crowds, her throbbing force,” and he will also feel the loss of “Her shining towers, her avenues, her slums.”
Even though some of the things on the list are not particularly beautiful and inspiring, especially to those attracted to a rural setting, this speaker has fallen in love with those attributes and is decrying the fact that death will deprive him of their enjoyment.
Finally, as he utters his lamentation, the reader cannot mistake the gloom in his voice: “O God! the stark, unutterable pity, / To be dead, and never again behold my city!”
Another Johnson article: “June Poet - James Weldon Johnson: 'Lift Every Voice and Sing'
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