The Song of the Sea Captain
Diego d’Alboquerque, brother of the great Affonso, a knight of the Portuguese Order of Jesus Christ, having landed on the coast north of Zanzibar, wandered to the Abyssinian highlands, where he saw and loved Prester John’s daughter, Melissa, a cousin of the Lady of Tripoli (la princesse lointaine). He was slain off Goa in the great fight with the Sultan of Muscat.
I sail a lone sea captain
Around the southern seas;
Worn as my cheek, the flag of Christ
Floats o’er me on the breeze.
By green isle and by desert,
By little white-walled town,
To west wind and to east wind
I lead my galleons down.
I know the black south-easter,
I know the drowsy calms
When the slow tide creeps shoreward
To lave the idle palms.
Of many a stark sea battle
The Muslim foe can tell,
When their dark dhows I sent to crabs
And their dark souls to hell.
Small reck have I of Muslim,
Small reck of winds and seas,
The waters are my pathway
To bring me to my ease.
The dawns that burn above me
Are torches set to light
My footsteps to a garden
Of roses red and white.
······
Five months we stood from Lagos,
While, scant of food and sleep,
We tracked da Gama’s highroad
Across the Guinea deep.
All spent we were with watching
When, ghostly as a dream,
The Bona Esperanza cape
Rose dark upon the beam.
Then by the low green inlets
We groped our passage forth,
Outside the shallow surf-bars
We headed for the north.
Sofala gave us victual,
Inyaka ease and rest,
But of the wayside harbours
I loved Melinda best.
’Twas on a day in April,
The Feast of Rosaly,
We beached our weary vessels,
Cried farewell to the sea,
And with ten stout companions
And hearts with youth made bold
We sought the inland mountains
Of which our fathers told.
No chart had we or counsel
To guide our weary feet,
To north and west we wandered
In drought and dust and heat,
Till o’er the steaming tree-tops
We saw the far-off dome
Of mystic icy mountains,
And knew the Prester’s home.
Nine days we clomb the foothills,
Nine days the mountain wall,
Sheer cliff and ancient forest
And fretted waterfall;
And on the tenth we entered
A meadow cool and deep,
And in the Prester’s garden
We laid us down to sleep.
Long time we fared like princes
In palaces of stone,
For never guest goes cheerless
Who meets with Prester John;
Where woodlands mount to gardens
And gardens climb to snows
And wells of living water
Sing rondels to the rose.
And there among the roses,
More white and red than they,
There walked the gleaming lady,
The princess far away.
Dearer her golden tresses
Than the high pomp of wars,
And deep and still her eyes as lakes
That brood beneath the stars.
There walked we and there spoke we
Of things that may not cease,
Of life and death and God’s dear love
And the eternal peace.
For in that shadowed garden
The world had grown so small
That one white girl in one white hand
Could clasp and hold it all.
I craved the Prester’s blessing,
I kissed his kingly hand:
“Too soon has come the parting
From this fair mountain land.
But shame it were for Christian knight
To take his leisure here
When o’er the broad and goodly earth
The Muslim sends his fear.
“I go to gird my sword on,
To drive my fleets afar,
To court the wrath of tempests,
The dusty toils of war.
But when my vows are ended,
Then, joyous from the fray,
I come to claim my lady,
The princess far away.”
······
I sail a lone sea captain
Across the southern seas;
Worn as my cheek, the flag of Christ
Still flaunts upon the breeze.
By green isle and by desert,
By little white-walled town,
To west wind and to east wind
I lead my galleons down.
But in the starkest tempest,
And in the drowsy heats,
Where on the shattered coral
The far-drawn breaker beats:
In seas of dreaming water,
And in the wind-swept spray,
I see my snow-white lady,
The princess far away.
Sometimes in inland places
We march for weary days,
Where thorns parch in the noontide
Or fens are dark with haze;—
For me ’tis but a march of dreams,
For ever, clear and low,
I hear cool waters falling
In the garden of the snow.
Small reck have I of Muslim,
Small reck of sands or seas;
The wide world is my pathway
To lead me to my ease.
The dawns that burn above me
Are torches set to light
My footsteps to a garden
Of rose red and white.
1905