America (Claude McKay poem) Summary

McKay's sonnet relates the intense and deeply ambivalent feelings the speaker holds towards America, here personified as a woman. The first four lines detail the speaker's "love" for this "cultured hell," despite the oppression and violence that America inflicts on him. The next six lines continue to develop this ambivalent relationship, describing how America's "vigor" paradoxically inspires the speaker against America's "hate." The speaker compares himself to a rebel facing a king but says he nevertheless holds no ill-will towards America. The final four lines of the poem present a somber vision of America's demise in the future, taking on a sort of cosmic perspective that sees this once-powerful empire slowly sinking into the sands under the "unerring" hand of Time.