Of the sea-ports whence we came,
But the old sea calls and the cold wind bites,
And our hearts are turned to flame.
We’ll win upon the tossing sea,
A silken gown for my dainty dear,
And a gold doubloon for me.
Of the cut-throat sons of Cain,
South by west and a quarter west,
And hey for the Spanish Main.
II
Is the hushed susurrus of the sea,
The mewing of the skuas, and the sailor’s song,
And the wind’s cry calling me.
Is troubled with the shifting tide,
Where the gulls are flying, crying in the bright white spray,
And the tan-sailed schooners ride.
III
Are spattering the bows with foam,
And the anchor’s catted, and she’s heading for the south
With her topsails sheeted home.
(To the clanking of the staysail’s hanks)
When the guns are growling and the blood runs red,
And the prisoners are walking of the planks.
D’AVALOS’ PRAYER
When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed,
Grant the last prayer that I shall pray, Be good to me, O Lord!
In the loud crying of the wind through sail and rope and spar;
Send me a ninth great peaceful wave to drown and roll me under
To the cold tunny-fishes’ home where the drowned galleons are.
Grant I may hear at whiles the wash and thresh of the sea-foam
About the fine keen bows of the stately clippers steering
Towards the lone northern star and the fair ports of home.
THE WEST WIND
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
And April’s in the west wind, and daffodils.
Apple orchards blossom there, and the air’s like wine.
There is cool green grass there, where men may lie at rest,
And the thrushes are in song there, fluting from the nest.
It’s April, and blossom time, and white is the may;
And bright is the sun, brother, and warm is the rain,—
Will ye not come home, brother, home to us again?
It’s blue sky, and white clouds, and warm rain and sun.
It’s song to a man’s soul, brother, fire to a man’s brain,
To hear the wild bees and see the merry spring again.
So will ye not come home, brother, and rest your tired feet?
I’ve a balm for bruised hearts, brother, sleep for aching eyes,’
Says the warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries.
To the green grass, the cool grass, and rest for heart and head,
To the violets and the warm hearts and the thrushes’ song,
In the fine land, the west land, the land where I belong.
THE GALLEY-ROWERS
The long-ship heaves her dripping flanks,
Singing together, the sea-roamers
Drive the oars grunting in the banks.
A long pull,
And a long long pull to Mydath.
Vexing the grey wind-angered brine,
Bearers of home-spun cloth, and bearers
Of goat-skins filled with country wine?’
SORROW OF MYDATH
Weary the heart and the mind and the body of me.
Would I were out of it, done with it, would I could be
A white gull crying along the desolate sands!
Standing drenched with the spindrift, standing athirst,
For the cool green waves of death to arise and burst
In a tide of quiet for me on the desolate sands.
Would gather in splendid terror and blot me away
To the sunless place of the wrecks where the waters sway
Gently, dreamily, quietly over desolate sands!
VAGABOND
Can’t say’s I ever knowed.
Heaven to me’s a fair blue stretch of sky,
Earth’s jest a dusty road.
Can’t say’s I ever will.
Dunno about God—he’s jest the noddin’ star
Atop the windy hill.
From wakin’-time to doss.
Dunno about Death—it’s jest a quiet stone
All over-grey wi’ moss.
Are things I never knowed;
My mark’s the gypsy fires, the lonely inns,
An’ jest the dusty road.
VISION
Yet once in the noisy ale-house I have seen and heard
The dear pale lady with the mournful eyes,
And a voice like that of a pure grey cooing bird.
(Oh frail white hands!)—she soothed my aching eyes;
And her hair fell about her in a dim clinging mist,
Like smoke from a golden incense burned in Paradise.
She healed with sweet forgiveness my black bitter sins,
Then passed into the night, and I go seeking her
Down the dark, silent streets, past the warm, lighted inns.
SPUNYARN
And one to slather the spunyarn, and one to knot the hank;
It’s an easy job for a summer watch, and a pleasant job enough,
To twist the tarry lengths of yarn to shapely sailor stuff.
Little enough is twined and spun but fever-fret and moil.
I have travelled on land and sea, and all that I have found
Are these poor songs to brace the arms that help the winches round.
THE DEAD KNIGHT
And the mumbling, grumbling humble-bees,
Are the only things that wander there,
The pitiful bones are laid at ease,
The grass has grown in his tangled hair,
And a rambling bramble binds his knees.
The only requiem-bells that rang
Were the hare-bell and the heather-bell.
Hushed he is with the holy spell
In the gentle hymn the wind sang,
And he lies quiet, and sleeps well.
The misty rain and the cold dew
Have altered him from the kingly one
(That his lady loved, and his men knew)
And dwindled him to a skeleton.
The straggling ivy twists and creeps
In his eye-sockets; the nettle keeps
Vigil about him while he sleeps.
Over his body the wind moans
With a dreary tune throughout the day,
In a chorus wistful, eerie, thin
As the gull’s cry—as the cry in the bay,
The mournful word the seas say
When tides are wandering out or in.
PERSONAL
And an old tune, a sweet tune, was being played within.
It was full of the laugh of the leaves and the song the wind sings;
It brought the tears and the choked throat, and a catch to the heart-strings.
The merry days in the old home before I went to sea—
Days that were dead to me indeed. I bowed my head to the rain,
And I passed by the lighted inn to the lonely roads again.
ON MALVERN HILL
It sweeps the tossing branches bare,
Blowing the poising kestrel over
The crumbling ramparts of the Caer.
Along the dusty road to home,
Once it awakened into chorus
The heart-strings in the ranks of Rome.
The shrilling trumpets broke the halt,
The Roman line, the Roman order,
Swayed forwards to the blind assault.
Charged and were scattered into spray,
Savage and taciturn the Roman
Hewed upwards in the Roman way.
Are lowing home across the fields,
The beaten warriors left the battle
Dead on the clansmen’s wicker shields.
Beneath the Beacon’s jutting spur,
Quiet are clan and chief, and quiet
Centurion and signifer.
TEWKESBURY ROAD
Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither nor why;
Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool rush of the air,
Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky;
Where the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the fox-gloves purple and white;
Where the shy-eyed delicate deer troop down to the pools to drink,
When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.
Is a tune for the blood to jig to, a joy past power of words;
And the blessed green comely meadows seem all a-ripple with mirth
At the lilt of the shifting feet, and the dear wild cry of the birds.
ON EASTNOR KNOLL
Hushed in the twilight: yonder, in the path through
The apple orchard, is a tired plough-boy
Calling the cows home.
Still the red, lurid wreckage of the sunset
Smoulders in smoky fire, and burns on
The misty hill-tops.
Fades into smoke, and now the gusty oaks are
A silent army of phantoms thronging
A land of shadows.
‘REST HER SOUL, SHE’S DEAD’
And the wind’s grief;
Strew her with laurel, cover her with bay
And ivy-leaf.
Let the slow mournful music sound before her,
Strew the white flowers about the bier, and o’er her
The sleepy poppies red beyond belief.
Let the dull earth be thrown;
Hers is the mightier silence of the skies,
And long, quiet rest alone.
Over the pure, dark, wistful eyes of her,
O’er all the human, all that dies of her,
Gently let flowers be strown.
(This blossom of ours),
She has done with the world’s anger and the world’s mirth,
Sunshine and rain-showers;
And over the poor, sad, tired face of her,
In the long grass above the place of her
(The grass which hides the glory and the grace of her),
May the Spring bring the flowers.
‘ALL YE THAT PASS BY’
The pageant of life is passing me on multitudinous feet,
With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea,
And—the great movement changes—the pageant passes me.
They haunt me, burn me to the heart, as I turn aside to go:
The king’s face and the cur’s face, and the face of the stuffed swine,
They are passing, they are passing, their eyes look into mine.
The thrill of the blood pulsing, the tick of the heart’s beat,
Of the men many as sands, of the squadrons ranked and massed
Who are passing, changing always, and never have changed or passed.
IN MEMORY OF A. P. R.
The road dust blowing in our eyes,
We starved or tramped or slept together
Beneath the haystacks and the skies;
And then the call for him was blown,
He left his friend—his fellow-rover—
To tramp the dusty roads alone.
TO-MORROW
The upland outlaws ringed us in and herded us as sheep,
They drove us from the stricken field and bayed us into keep;
But to-morrow
By the living God, we’ll try the game again!
Our swaying, tattered pennons fled, a broken, beaten few,
And all a summer afternoon they hunted us and slew;
But to-morrow,
By the living God, we’ll try the game again!
The wake-lights burn and drip about our hacked, disfigured dead,
And many a broken heart is here and many a broken head;
But to-morrow,
By the living God, we’ll try the game again!
CAVALIER
Dust is swimming dizzily down the village street,
The scabbards are clattering, the feathers nodding time,
To a clink of many horses’ shoes, a tramp of many feet.
Trolling lusty stirrup-songs, clamouring for wine,
Riding with a loose rein, marching with a swing,
Beneath the blue bannerol of Rupert of the Rhine.
A SONG AT PARTING
And ripe and ready am I for rest in the grave atop the hill;
So gather me up and lay me down, for ready and ripe am I,
For the weary vigil with sightless eyes that may not see the sky.
So carry me up the lonely hill and lay me in the grave,
And cover me in with cleanly mould and old and lichened stones,
In a place where ever the cry of the wind shall thrill my sleepy bones.
Cover me in with wholesome earth, and weep and leave me there;
And get you gone with a kindly thought and an old tune and a sigh,
And leave me alone, asleep, at rest, for ready and ripe am I.
GLOSSARY
Abaft the beam.—That half of a ship included between her amidship section and the taffrail. (For ‘taffrail,’ see below.)
Abel Brown.—An unquotable sea-song.
Advance-note.—A note for one month’s wages issued to sailors on their signing a ship’s articles.
Belaying-pins.—Bars of iron or hard wood to which running rigging may be secured or belayed. Belaying-pins, from their handiness and peculiar club-shape, are sometimes used as bludgeons.
Bloody.—An intensive derived from the substantive ‘blood,’ a name applied to the Bucks, Scowrers, and Mohocks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Blue Peter.—A blue and white flag hoisted at the fore-trucks of ships about to sail.
Bollard.—From bōl or bole, the round trunk of a tree. A phallic or ‘sparklet’-shaped ornament of the dockside, of assistance to mariners in warping into or out of dock.
Bonded Jacky.—Negro-head tobacco or sweet cake.
Bull of Barney.—A beast mentioned in an unquotable sea-proverb.
Bumpkin.—An iron bar (projecting out-board from the ship’s side) to which the lower and topsail brace blocks are sometimes hooked.
Cape Horn fever.—The illness proper to malingerers.
Catted.—Said of an anchor when weighed and secured to the ‘cat-head.’
Chanty.—A song sung to lighten labour at the capstan sheets, and halliards. The soloist is known as the chanty-man, and is usually a person of some authority in the fo’c’s’le. Many chanties are of great beauty and extreme antiquity.
Clipper-bow.—A bow of delicate curves and lines.
Clout.—A rag or cloth. Also a blow:—‘I fetched him a clout i’ the lug.’
Crimp.—A sort of scoundrelly land-shark preying upon sailors.
D.B.S.—Distressed British Sailor. A term applied to those who are invalided home from foreign ports.
Dungaree.—A cheap, rough thin cloth (generally blue or brown), woven, I am told, of coco-nut fibre.
Forward or Forrard.—Towards the bows.
Fo’c’s’le (Forecastle).—The deck-house or living-room of the crew. The word is often used to indicate the crew, or those members of it described by passengers as the ‘common sailors.’
Fore-stay.—A powerful wire rope supporting the fore-mast forward.
Gaskets.—Ropes or plaited lines used to secure the sails in furling.
Goneys.—Albatrosses.
Guffy.—A marine or jolly.
Gullies.—Sea-gulls, Cape Horn pigeons, etc.
Heave and pawl.—A cry of encouragement at the capstan.
Hooker.—A periphrasis for ship, I suppose from a ship’s carrying hooks or anchors.
Jack or Jackstay.—A slender iron rail running along the upper portions of the yards in some ships.
Leeward.—Pronounced ‘looard.’ That quarter to which the wind blows.
Mainsail haul.—An order in tacking ship bidding ‘swing the mainyards.’ To loot, steal, or ‘acquire.’
Main-shrouds.—Ropes, usually wire, supporting lateral strains upon the mainmast.
Mollies.—Molly-hawks, or Fulmar petrels. Wide-winged dusky sea-fowls, common in high latitudes, oily to taste, gluttonous. Great fishers and garbage-eaters.
Port Mahon Baboon, or Port Mahon Soger.—I have been unable to discover either the origin of these insulting epithets or the reasons for the peculiar bitterness with which they sting the marine recipient. They are older than Dana (circa 1840).
An old merchant sailor, now dead, once told me that Port Mahon was that godless city from which the Ark set sail, in which case the name may have some traditional connection with that evil ‘Mahoun’ or ‘Mahu,’ prince of darkness, mentioned by Shakespeare and some of our older poets.
The real Port Mahon, a fine harbour in Minorca, was taken by the French, from Admiral Byng, in the year 1756.
I think that the phrases originated at the time of Byng’s consequent trial and execution.
Purchase.—See ‘Tackle.’
Quidding.—Tobacco-chewing.
Sails.—The sail-maker.
Santa Cruz.—A brand of rum.
Scantling.—Planks.
Soger.—A laggard, malingerer, or hang-back. To loaf or skulk or work Tom Cox’s Traverse.
Spunyarn.—A three-strand line spun out of old rope-yarns knotted together. Most sailing-ships carry a spunyarn winch, and the spinning of such yarn is a favourite occupation in fine weather.
Stirrup.—A short rope supporting the foot-rope on which the sailors stand when aloft on the yards.
Tack.—To stay or ’bout ship. A reach to windward. The weather lower corner of a course.
Tackle.—Pronounced taykle. A combination of pulleys for obtaining of artificial power.
Taffrail.—The rail or bulwark round the sternmost end of a ship’s poop or after-deck.
Trick.—The ordinary two-hour spell at the wheel or on the look-out.
Windward or Weather.—That quarter from which the wind blows.
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