AT PORTSMOUTH
The great ships in the harbourSit silent on the tide,
And in the sea beneath them
Their gloomy shadows ride.
There is no life, no beauty,
No grace the heart can feel,
In those irenic monsters—
Those hideous forms of steel.
It is old England's squadron,
Her constant watch and ward—
The bulwark of her freedom,
The Channel's matchless guard.
How different from the frigates
That bore the dauntless Blake;
How different from the liners
That roared in Nelson's wake!
Majestic then and lofty
They towered above the deep,
Bestowing beauty on the main
Their forms were framed to keep.
Sail over sail they offered
Their canvas to the wind,
That mimicked in its whiteness
The wake they swept behind.
No wonder kingly seamen
Were bred in ships like those;
No wonder that they made them
A terror to their foes.
For in the grace and beauty
They shed upon the sea
Man found the inspiration
That kept him brave and free.
And man and ship together
Played well that noble part,
Until their oaken sides became
A symbol for his heart.
But look! where black and formless
Those modern monsters ride
A blot upon the seascape,
A load upon the tide.
Hark! from the massive flagship
Breathes out the morning gun;
Exultant in its mission
Her ensign meets the sun.
From battle-ship and cruiser,
From merchantman and fort,
The cross of red makes glorious
The strong and ancient port.
Then with a heart that follows
I turn my eager eyes
To where at honored moorings
The grand old victor lies.
There floats the same proud bunting
She swept along the breeze
The day that France was broken
And driven from the seas.
There in prophetic splendor
It crowns her shapely spar,
The promise of a future—
The final Trafalgar.
AT ANCHOR.
Sights of sail are caught on the edge—Black coasters waiting the flood;
Nest of spars that stroke like the sedge
Long rivers of sunset blood.
Gleam of lamps low down in the west,
Gulls crying over the bar,
Sea as still as a child at breast,
Moon following up a star.
That is to-night—and our own to twist
Round memory's finger and hold,
As guerdon for those we've lost or missed
While fretting and fighting for gold.
FROM THE CLIFF.
The wind is fresh, the wind is foul;The clouds are long and low and gray;
The rocky headland wears a cowl,
And looks a monk who kneels to pray
And tell his beads for parting souls:
While out beyond the bar there rolls
A sullen swell, and white and high
Along the cliffs the breakers fly.
Roar, roar, O Sea! Thy stormy song
Appalls the weak, but nerves the strong.
Look! yonder bark with puffing sail
Has turned her bow to win the sea;
She fears to meet the rising gale
With reef and rockland on her lee.
And as she luffs the blast to greet,
By halyard, clew, and straining sheet,
All, all, alert her seamen stand,
And watch with anxious eye the land.
Roar, roar, O Sea! Thy stormy song
Appalls the weak, but nerves the strong.
Then tack on tack she weathers out—
Her topsails shiver in the wind;
Down goes the helm, she flies about,
And leaping off soon leaves behind
The rocky dangers, and has past
The headland, when the wrathful blast,
Bursts from the cloud and wild and grand
Hurls in the sea against the land.
Roar, roar, O Sea! Thy stormy song
Appalls the weak, but nerves the strong.
THEN AND NOW.
The wind has changed to happy south,The tide is setting free,
As one by one, past harbor mouth,
Our ships stand out to sea.
We watch them pass, my love and I;
We shout Halloo! from shore.
Good-bye! Good-bye! the sailors cry;
Good-bye! the breakers roar.
The wind has turned to icy north,
Full bitterly it blows;
The sea is wroth, and white with froth,
And no ship comes or goes.
We watch for them, my love and I;
We linger on the shore.
The breakers cry Ho! ho! Good-bye!—
Good-bye for evermore.
THE SHIPS.
Sing the sea, sing the ships,Sing the sea and its ships,
With the lightness and the brightness
Of the foam about their lips;
When reaching off to seaward,
When running down to leeward,
When beating up to port with the pilot at the fore;
When racing down the Trade,
Or ratching half afraid
With a lookout on the yard for the marks along the shore.
Sing them when you frame them,
Sing them when you name them,
Sing them as you sing the woman whom you love;
For the world of life they lose you,
For the home that they refuse you,
For the sea that deeps beneath them and the sky that crowns above.
Sing them when they leave you,
Sing them when they grieve you,
Going down the harbor with a smoky tug along;
With the yards braced this and that,
And the anchor at the cat,
And the bunting saying good-bye to the watching, waving throng.
Sing them when they need you,
Sing them when they speed you,
With their stems making trouble for the steep Atlantic seas;
When the channel as she rolls
Heaps the foam along the poles,
And the decks fore-and-aft are awash above your knees.
Sing them when they spring you,
Sing them when they wing you,
Rolling down the Trades with a breeze that never shifts;
When the crew they quite forget
What is meant by cold and wet,
And the feel of the braces and the sheets and the lifts.
Sing them when they mock you,
Sing them when they shock you,
Smothered under topsails with the kingly Horn abeam;
When the wind flies round about
And the watch is always out,
And all hands are wishing that they'd signed to go in steam.
Sing the sea, sing the ships,
Sing the sea and its ships,
With the molding and the folding
Of the wave about their form;
Sing them when they teach us,
Sing them when they preach us,
A lesson in the calm and a sermon in the storm.
Sing them when the dying
Wind has left them lying
With the canvas in the brails a-tremble to the rolls;
And the ocean is so still
That you wonder if it will
Give back to her who bore them those legions of lost souls.
Sing the sea, sing the ships,
Sing the sea and its ships,
With the forming and the storming
Of the wave athwart their bows;
Sing them when you clear them,
Sing them when you steer them,
For the strength that they have given
And the courage they arouse.
For the nation that forgets them,
For the nation that regrets them,
Is a nation that is dying as the nations all must die;
For there never yet was state
That met the Roman fate
While she had a ship to guard her and a sailor to stand by.
For the traffic you have won,
For the web that you have spun,
To catch the flies of commerce and the fleeting gnats of trade
Will be rent and blown away,
For the weak will never pay
Their earnings to a people who have stamped themselves afraid.
Pull down the selfish wall!
We are not cowards all!
There are some who dare to struggle with the traders of the world.
Cast off the nation's chain,
And give us back the main,
And the flag that's never absent and the sail that's never furled.
Sing the sea, sing the ships,
Sing the sea and its ships,
With the mounding and the pounding
Of the wave along their sides;
When sailing out and bounding,
When towing in and rounding,
They drop the anxious anchor and they face the swinging tides.
Sing them when you leave them
Sing them when you heave them
To a fast berth, a last berth beside the knackers quay;
For our ships are getting rotten
And our people have forgotten
The mission of the vessel and the glory of the sea.
THE MAN-O'-WAR'S-MAN'S YARN.
Down came the corvette on our weather;Then thundered our broadsides together.
Thus thus we fought all day;
And when the sun set and evening spread
Across the East her mantle gray,
Under our lee she lay,
Her decks a mass of dead.
Yet at her splintered foremast head
Her ensign laughed,
Lifting and flapping in the draft,
Scorning our shot to bring it down.
Our Captain eyed it with a frown
To hide his admiration—
Hero himself, he heroes knew,
Tho' children of a hated nation.
Then to his weary blood-stained crew
He cried:—
"To your guns once more
And let our broadside roar!"
Then hot and close we plied
Her with shot that tore
Her fore and aft;
Yet still that crimson banner laughed—
Yet still her broken, bleeding men
Gave back our cheers again.
We would have spared them then;
As with fierce and flashing eyes,
With eyes aflame with pride,
We looked upon a foe
Who for twelve hot hours defied
A vessel twice her size.
But Fate thrust in a bloody fist
And gave our hearts a devilish twist.
A random shot that hit our rail
Came from her foremost gun,
And flying in the splinter hail
Struck down the one
Whose voice had shaped and cheered the fray
Thro' all that mad and murderous day.
He fell; and for a space we stood
As though our smoke-grimed forms had turned to wood,
The victims of some deadly spell.
Silence—save for the feverish groans of they
Who, writhing, dying lay—
Was over all; then suddenly there burst a yell
That would have shocked and staggered hell!
Ah! you who sit with me to-night
And talk of war, of might and right;
Had you been there to see that fight,
When, reeling down upon the wreck,
We boarded, leaping on her deck,
And mad with slaughter—mad and blind
With blood of ours, aye, your own kind.
We shot and cut, we slew
The remnant of that dauntless crew;
And when our pikes had struck the last
Tore down that ensign from the mast.
Had you been there, I say, to see
That horror—but, enough for me
To tell, we shuddered at the sight
When in the chill that follows fight
We gazed upon that slaughter pen
And knew those things as fellow-men.
With feverish haste we cleared the deck,
Then fired the slowly sinking wreck,
And cutting loose stood off astern,
And watched her spar and topsides burn
Till suddenly a blinding flash;
A roar. Silence. Here—there—a splash
And all was o'er. We filled our yard,
Though leaking much and laboring hard
Stood up for port, and made at last
The harbor's light. But ho! avast
With tales like this; they breed a thirst—
Another glass—my throat is curs'd
With fire. Here's to the gallant tar
Who talks of peace, yet longs for war;
Who lives to see his ship again
Dispute the glory of the main,
And man for man, and gun for gun,
Meet such another dauntless one.
A FOGGY MORNING.
Seaward driving, like a shriving
Gray monk cloaked in gray,
Thro' the crowded ship-enshrouded,
Buoy-bound reaches of the bay;
Misty moving phantoms proving
Vessels creeping slowly past.
Hark! the droning fog-horn moaning
From the steamer looming vast;
Bell-buoy telling when the swelling
Swell of ocean rocks its boat
Where the ledge's granite edges
Threaten ships that overfloat;
Canvas dripping, dew streams slipping
Down the black and swollen gear;
Helmsman peering at the steering
Compass thro' a watery blear;
Topsails dimming in the swimming
Vapor sea that floats o'erhead,
And the singing seaman swinging
Constantly the pilot lead;
Sun uprising with surprising
Mystic glory haunts the shroud,
Red and rolling thro' the shoaling
Eastward verges of the cloud;
Spars uplifting on the shifting
Billows of the fading mist
Seem suspended on extended
Rippling ropes of amethyst;
Day-star bursting, hotly thirsting,
Drains the fog with fervid lips;
Sunlight flashing shows us dashing
Past the port, the town, the ships.
UNKNOWN.
Lo! when the sun was half dropt in the west,As wing-weary sea birds seeking their night-rest,
They drifted in upon the harbor's breast.
None knew from whence they came, or where they sailed;
No betraying pennon from their mastheads trailed;
They answered not when they were loudly hailed.
When the day into the night had died
They clustered on the ebbing tide,
Like sleeping sea swans, side by side.
The warders at the midnight hour,
Within the shadow of the tower,
Watched their lanterns rise and lower.
Ere scarce the day and earth had wed,
Their oars on either side they spread,
Shook out their sails and southward fled.
And when the sun shot up across the bay,
Naught showed where they had made their stay,
Save the broken corals where their anchors lay.
So into my heart at eventide
Ofttimes a fleet of dreams will glide,
And all night long at anchor ride.
From whence they come, or where they go,
What pain or joy their forms foreshow,
I dare not ask—I cannot know.
But when dawn breaks o'er sea and mart,
With rippling oars and yearning sails they start,
Leaving their anchor marks upon my heart.
THE COASTERS.
Overloaded, undermanned,Trusting to a lee;
Playing I-spy with the land,
Jockeying the sea—
That's the way the Coaster goes,
Thro' calm and hurricane:
Everywhere the tide flows,
Everywhere the wind blows,
From Mexico to Maine.
O East and West! O North and South!
We ply along the shore,
From famous Fundy's foggy mouth,
From voes of Labrador;
Thro' pass and strait, on sound and sea,
From port to port we stand—
The rocks of Race fade on our lee,
We hail the Rio Grande.
Our sails are never lost to sight;
On every gulf and bay
They gleam, in winter wind-cloud white,
In summer rain-cloud gray.
We hold the coast with slippery grip;
We dare from cape to cape;
Our leaden fingers feel the dip
And trace the channel's shape.
We sail or bide as serves the tide;
Inshore we cheat its flow,
And side by side at anchor ride
When stormy head-winds blow.
We are the offspring of the shoal,
The hucksters of the sea;
From customs theft and pilot toll,
Thank God that we are free.
Legging on and off the beach,
Drifting up the strait,
Fluking down the river reach,
Towing thro' the Gate—
That's the way the Coaster goes,
Flirting with the gale:
Everywhere the tide flows,
Everywhere the wind blows,
From York to Beavertail.
Here and there to get a load,
Freighting anything;
Running off with spanker stowed,
Loafing wing-a-wing—
That's the way the Coaster goes,
Chumming with the land:
Everywhere the tide flows,
Everywhere the wind blows,
From Ray to Rio Grande.
We split the swell where rings the bell
On many a shallow's edge,
We take our flight past many a light
That guards the deadly ledge,
We greet Montauk across the foam,
We work the Vineyard Sound,
The Diamond sees us running home,
The Georges outward bound;
Absecom hears our canvas beat
When tacked off Brigantine,
We raise the Gulls with lifted sheet,
Pass wing-and-wing between.
Off Monomoy we fight the gale,
We drift off Sandy Key;
The watch of Fenwick sees our sail
Scud for Henlopen's lee.
With decks awash and canvas torn
We wallow up the Stream;
We drag dismasted, cargo borne,
And fright the ships of steam.
Death grips us with his frosty hands
In calm and hurricane;
We spill our bones on fifty sands
From Mexico to Maine.
Cargo reef in main and fore,
Manned by half a crew;
Romping up the weather shore,
Edging down the Blue—
That's the way the Coaster goes.
Scouting with the lead:
Everywhere the tide flows,
Everywhere the wind blows,
From Cruz to Quoddy Head.
TO-DAY.
The sea and the sky are in love to-day,Their forms are the forms of one;
And ships that sit on the lip of the bay,
Coming and going the other way,
Are sparks in the sparkling sun.
The shape and shadow of yachts that slip
Embayed by the land's long sweep
Are phantoms that cover a phantom ship,
While out on the shoals the summer gulls dip—
To-day is a day asleep.