The Rime Of The Three Captains
Three captains lounged before the blaze
Of drift wood burning cheerily,
And they warmed to ventures of other days
In salty tales of the sea.
Tarred were the ropes coiled under the eaves,
Tar had dripped on the warping floor,
Beach sand fluttered like withered leaves
And sifted under the door.
The salt that crusted the chimney wide
Had tinged the flames with yellows and reds;
Salt were the wavelets that lapped outside,
And white as the salt were their heads.
Visions of many a tropic clime
In the firelight seemed to come and go;
Till friends they had known in their youthful prime
Took form in the radiant glow.
As time cracked voices droned away
Through strange adventures in days gone by,
One voyaged with them to far Cathay
And spice swept Araby.
Quaint were the islands they knew so well
Zanzibar, Pitcairn, and Celebes;
Isles enchanted where reigned the spell
Of other and lonelier seas.
Seas that cringed at the typhoon’s wrath
When his thunderous roar was heard;
Silent seas in the calm of death
Where never a whisper stirred.
And the pulses quickened to hear their tales
of voices hailing from spectral sands;
Of dead men’s ships with their ghastly sails
Unfurled by skeleton hands!
Legends weird of an unplumbed deep
Where galleons foundered in days of yore;
And sightless monsters that grope and creep
In the slime of the ocean floor.
Sagas of shipwreck in days long gone,
Of pirate treasure and revelry,
Of clashing cutlass and fights hard won
In some blood stained mutiny.
On decks awash how they held their own
When faced by the knives of a cursing crew.
And they spoke of shoals and of ledges lone
Which only the sea birds knew.
Youth flushed once more on withered cheeks,
Bent shoulders squared defiantly,
At such deeds as fired the warlike Greeks
In their legended Odyssey.
And the murmuring tide ebbed once again,
And the fire burned low e’re the captains three
Recalled with a sigh they were old, old men
Who were done with their toil on the sea.