A New Year's Greeting to the City of the Lakes
"A New Year's Greeting to the City of the Lakes" is a short occasional poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox addressed to Milwaukee, Wisconsin — commonly known as the City of the Lakes — written to be read or sung as a New Year's salutation to the city and its people. The speaker opens by announcing her intention to compose a greeting while the city sleeps and deliver it upon its waking. The poem is structured as a song within a meditation: the speaker imagines the verses she will write, then discovers, before she can complete them, that dawn has already arrived and her muse has fled. The central theme is gratitude for peace. The speaker celebrates the return of national unity following the Civil War, marking the contrast between fields once scarlet with the blood of the dead and fields now white with winter snow — an image of renewal over carnage. Brothers from North and South are envisioned meeting again without enmity, exchanging New Year's wishes across the old divide. Alongside this national reconciliation, the poem sounds a note of temperance. In a parenthetical aside, the speaker prays that wine be absent from every festive table, reflecting Wilcox's sympathy with the temperance movement that was prominent in her era and milieu. The religious register is consistent throughout. The speaker frames peace, life, and the new year itself as divine gifts, repeatedly directing the reader to thank God for these blessings. The tone is earnest and devotional rather than merely celebratory. The closing turn is gently self-deprecating. Having spent the night in dreaming and pondering the song she intended to write, the speaker finds the sun has risen and the moment passed — the grand greeting she promised the city remains unwritten, overtaken by the very morning it was meant to greet. This gives the poem a slight ironic circularity: the act of planning the song consumes the time in which the song might have been sung. The "City of the Lakes" is addressed throughout as a personified, sleeping figure cradled by water — an image that romanticizes Milwaukee's geography and endows the city with a kind of innocent repose that the speaker is reluctant to disturb.
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox · First published 1905 · Genre: Poetry, Occasional Poetry, Patriotic Poetry · 366 words
First lines
I said "I will write a greeting, / To the City of the Lakes, / Write, while the city sleepeth, / And sing it when it wakes.
"To this fair, and blessed city, / That the glad New Year doth bring / Its best, and its sweetest treasure, / Its choicest offering.
Similar titles
- Flowers For The Brave by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Be Not Weary by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- A Tribute by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Long Ago by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Lines by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Sparkles From The Wheel by Walt Whitman
Genres
- Poetry — The work is written in structured verse with rhyme scheme and meter, employing poetic devices and line breaks characteristic of the form.
- Occasional Poetry — Explicitly composed for a specific occasion—a New Year's greeting—making the commemorative purpose central to its design and function.
- Patriotic Poetry — Contains pronounced nationalist themes, references to national pride, peace after conflict, and reconciliation between regions, with invocations of the nation's collective welfare.
- Greeting Verse — Functions as a formal greeting card in verse form, addressing a city directly with wishes and blessings appropriate to the New Year occasion.
Tags
poetry · new year · greeting · inspirational · optimistic · Chicago · urban · civic · celebration · reflection · hope · renewal
What this Textopian page supports
A New Year's Greeting to the City of the Lakes is listed on Textopian as a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, dated 1905 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Date: 1905 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Poetry, Occasional Poetry, Patriotic Poetry, Greeting Verse, Celebratory Poetry
- Length: 366 words
- Structure: 1 section, 9 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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- Work identity for A New Year's Greeting to the City of the Lakes by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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