Oh, what comes flowing over the sea
In the hush of the evening's cool?
It is a mermaid singing to me
As she sits in a silver pool.
As she sits in a silver pool and sings
Of the world I never shall see,
Where the dulse-weed clings,
And the star-fish rings
The red anemone;
The world which lies
Where human eyes
Are never allowed to see
The gold and gems
And fluted stems
Of the crimson coral tree—
Is that what she sings to me?
She is haunting and holding my heart with a strain,
Where joy lies asleep in the shadow of pain;
And the world that is under the sea
Is spreading its pleasures and treasures to gain
The love that lies dormant in me—
The love that I bear for the sea,
For the secret and sorrowful sea;
Is luring my feet from the gray land again
And filling my soul with the scent of the main,
The sound and the scent of the sea;
And the speech of the siren is spoken in vain,
For that mermaid is singing to me
Of the world that is under the sea;
And the love that I bear for the ocean again,
For the mournful and mutable sea,
Has taken possession of me:
My heart is enmeshed in the mystical strain
That mermaid is singing to me
Of the world that lies under the sea.
Ah, hark again! In a sadder strain
She is singing a song to me—
A song of the unseen sea;
She is singing of ships whose wrecks have lain
For ages in the sea,
In the depths of the sunless sea;
And her voice is soft with a thought of the pain
That song is giving to me.
A thought that I thought forever had lain
In the depths of the soundless sea
Is searching my soul in that mermaid's strain
And bringing a sorrow to me
From the world that is under the sea.
For I have a friend whose bones have lain
For ages in the sea,
(For so it seems to me),
And her song has opened that wound again
And brought back a sorrow to me—
From the depths of the endless sea.
A grief that is grieving my life again,
A thought that I thought, forever had lain,
And never come back to me,
Is searching my soul in that mermaid's strain
And bringing a sorrow to me
From the world that lies under the sea.
Oh, what comes flowing over the sea
In the hush of the evening's cool?
It is a mermaid singing to me
As she sits in a silver pool.
Above the Spanish shore;
Our cannon's random roar
Then woke black Trafalgar.
Where our foes
Lay in the crescent bay
We watched the fog bank gray
Melt silently away
As the sun uprose.
Then rolled the deep alarm—
The foeman's call to arm;
And swiftly from our van
There pass'd from man to man,
"They will fight."
With hearts that beat to chase
We caught the growing gale,
And 'neath a press of sail
Bore up to take our place
On the right.
Nelson, our admiral then,
Greatest of all seamen,
We cheered to death again
As he pass'd;
'Round toward the land
We tacked and stood about—
The hills rang to our shout
As lifted and blew out
His last command
From the mast.
Then flash'd our full broadside,
Roaring across the tide,
As crashing side by side
We broke their line;
Thro' rolling clouds of smoke
Burst in our prows of oak;
Their tall sides bent and broke
Like pine.
As died the stagger'd blast
The sails dropt to the mast;
That broadside was their last!
One more to clip her wing!
Quick away!
Tigers our boarders spring,
Cutlass to cutlass ring,
In the fray.
We heard no quarter call:
A man stood every Gaul!
Useless, their flag must fall
That day.
The fight thus well begun,
We paused a breathing space;
Each soul leapt to a face
As Nelson in his grace
Signaled "Well done!"
Staying the tott'ring mast
We rounded to the blast,
Grappled the next that pass'd—
A huge Spaniard.
No room to lift the ports:
Black gun to gun retorts—
Lip locked to lip,
Each man a firmer grip
On his lanyard.
To save this pride of Spain
A Frenchman joined the fight;
Then roaring in our might
We smote him with our right
Twice, and again.
"Cease! Cease!" our Captain cries.
"She lies
A silent wreck!"
Three times we spared that foe,
Yet from her came the blow
That laid our hero low
On the deck.
What more for me to say,
Save thro' the fatal fray
We marked the hours that day
With cheers!
Our foes struck one by one;
Yet when the fight was done
We saw the misty sun
Set thro' our tears.
O England, strong yet free,
The crown we bear to thee,
Laurels for victory!
Weave cypress in the wreath:
For he to whom thou gave
The keeping of the wave,
Nelson, the true, the brave,
Has struck his flag to death.
Oh, men of hero race,
In what a fitting place
To set his conquering star!—
Amid the battle's roar,
Under the rolling shore
Where rises wild and hoar
Cape Trafalgar.
Across the Island Sound;
When every sail that draws aloft
Is swollen true and round;
When yellow shores along the lee
Slope upward to the sky;
When opal bright the land and sea
In changeful contact lie;
When idle yachts at anchor swim
Above a phantom shape;
When spires of canvas dot the rim
Which curves from cape to cape;
When sea-weed strewn the ebbing tide
Pours eastward to the main;
When clumsy coasters side by side
Tack in and out again—
When such a day is mine to live,
What has the world beyond to give?
The wind has blown from out the west,
And now the sunset fires invest
Where looms the mainland far away,
The old town right abreast.
The red-brown roofs and rugged spires
Uplift and pierce the sunset fires,
The old town right abreast.
The ships rise up, and sail, and sail,
Then drop beneath the distant rim—
The crimson rim.
We watch their topsails float and trail—
Like bubbles 'round a goblet's brim,
A moment there they rise and dip,
Then break against the sky's red lip.
Unhailed the ships go sailing by
The old town over there;
And yet it seems we hear a cry—
A heart-born cry
Of anguish and despair,
Of hope lost in despair.
In speechful grief the old town stands
And beckons with its outstretched hands
As the ships go sailing by.
Long years ago its port was thronged
With many a busy sail,
With rustling sail.
And many a heart has sighed and longed
For that old town's cheery hail—
Has sighed and longed for that old town's welcome hail.
Oh, where are they who left thy port
In strength of youth, in pride of love?
Side by side with a dark consort,
Calm seas below, blue skies above,
They tacked and stood across the bar:
Only the sea knows where they are—
Only the sea!
Perhaps at night the phantom ships—
Thy lost ships—come sailing in;
Their spectre crews with parted lips
That utter no sound, for the spell of death
Turns even a laugh to a grin.
Do they wait, and list for the din
Of the cheers and the bells to welcome them in—
For the cheers and the bells to welcome them in?
Do their dead hearts know hopes and fears?
Do they dream of the wives they've not seen for years?—
The wives and the sweethearts who watched them thro' tears
Sail away, sail away, when the wind was south
And the bar was blue at the harbor's mouth,
And the gulls flew low like flakes of snow,
And the summer wind bore the heave-yo-ho
Of the sailors brown
Into the town?
Are they here, the ones so dear?
Alas! the lips that their lips have known,
Alas! the hearts that once beat to their own
Are lying up on the hillside there,
And the daisies and grasses have overgrown
Their graves for many a year.
Yon sentinel pine that watches the graves
Where their wives and sweethearts are laid to rest
The wild winter wind defies and outbraves;
Its roots are sunk in some loved one's breast.
Are their souls at rest?
Sometimes, I think, they must wander down here
To watch for the ships that never will come.
In the silence of night they throng the old pier
To welcome the wanderers home;
Their lustreless eyes—
Enough of death and ghostly tales!
Oh, let the old town keep its vigil there,
Watching for those who were!
What though the dark ship with us sails—
Ah, fools, to freight our hearts with care!
To waste our breath in idle hails,
To cringe and cry.
We live for those who are, not were!—
We live to live, not die!
Along the edge the ship-shap'd moon
Leadeth a star across the sea
To the cloudy harbor under her lee.
With her splendid lading of golden light
She seems to dread the pirate Night;
With puffing sails and fretful oars
She steereth and speedeth for purple shores.
She will anchor to-night beneath the fort
Whose grim guns guard the cloudy port,
Where sound and safe from picaroon
Rides many an olden and golden moon.
With a cheery good-eve the mate comes forth,
The second goes off to his welcome bed,
After giving the course as west by north.
As I stand with my chin on the dodger's ridge
And dreamily eye our plunging craft
There's a rattle of heels on the flying bridge
And a gruff report that the watch is aft.
"All right!" says the mate, with a glance below;
"Relieve the wheel and the lookout there!"
And then we begin, with our to and fro,
The walk and the talk we nightly share.
In silence at first—for our pipes are lit—
We pace and puff, and we pause and turn,
And it's up and down, for she rolls a bit
When flying light with the sea astern.
But there's a key in the hands of smoke
That fits a lock in the lazy brain,
And we spring the wards with a quiet joke
And rout out a store of yarns again.
Our voices ring with a pleasant sound,
And now and again it seems to me
As though in the roar that sweeps around
We are joined by the social sea.
And in that strange way that talk is bred—
As a few grains sown bring the wheaty stack—
So something afresh the other said
Put the roaming brain on another tack.
And we boxed about in an aimless way,
With a careless fling from sea to land,
And spoke of the world as a young man may
When he hasn't the time to understand.
We spoke of the land that gave us birth;
We spoke of the one that's home to me:
Those nations destined to shape the earth
To the single state it is to be—
Of tricks we played in our school-boy days;
The fun and frolic of being young;
How we jollied life in a hundred ways
With gibes that pleased and jests that stung.
And of those we loved—for now we knew
With half our life in the dim astern
Which lights were false and which lights were true,
And whose was the hand that bid them burn.
Of the rough hard life the sailor leads,
The pay he gets and the sharks ashore,
And what are the laws our shipping needs,
And the way things went in days of yore.
Of the sailing ship as she yet survives,
Of rigs we never shall see again,
Of inventions that save our seamen's lives
And murder the breed of sailor men.
We talk of these and of many a bout
When a crew came aft for a nasty row—
When loud comes a cry from the fore look-out
Of a light on the starboard bow.
"All right!" the response. Then we train our eyes
On the western rim thro' the closing night.
It's a steamer, sure, by the flash and size—
A liner's electric masthead light.
She rises fast, and is soon up well,
Rushing along 'neath a smoky pall,
A mass of lights like some huge hotel
Ablaze for its annual boarders' ball.
As she grows abeam—for we give her space,
For twenty knots is a right of way—
There's an answering glow on old ocean's face
And a glint on the waves in play.
And I think, as I watch her speed along,
Of the many lives she holds in trust,
And ponder what they would do, that throng,
If Fate should get in a deadly thrust.
A ship like ours or a sunken wreck—
A crash in the dark—some plates stove in—
A frightened rush for the upper deck,
And a clamorous, cowardly din!
How some would die as men should die,
How some would perish in selfish strife,
How some in that hour would dignify
By a noble close a worthless life.
How she whose vigor we oft deride—
The woman—would show her courage then,
And meet her death at her lover's side
In a way to shame the best of men.
But, Science be praised, it is seldom now
We lose a ship by a sudden crash,
For what with the lights and the whistle's row
We luckily dodge a general smash.
And that ship there, as she breasts the swell
And ghosts her side with a foamy ridge,
Has had many a shave—for logs don't tell
All the tales of a steamer's bridge.
In silence we watch her for quite a time
Until she becomes a smoky blear,
Then as ten rings out from the fo'c'sle chime
I go aft to my cheese and my beer.
A cold gray reach of shore,
A gleam of sail upon the lee—
And nothing more.
My eyes saw that, my heart saw more:
A woman whose quivering lip
Moulded this sentence o'er and o'er,
"God keep that ship!"
God keep that ship! Her prayer, not mine,
Goes out across the sea
To where beyond the misty line
A face is turned from me.
God keep that ship! Her ship, not mine—
Mine never came back to me.
Both feet on the yard, for a look around,
With eyes that ache for a sight of the land,
For we are homeward bound.
Like a bowl of silver the ocean lies,
Untouched by the fret of a single sail,
And over its edge the billows uprise
And slide before the gale.
I see, close beneath me, the garn's'l bulge,
And half of the tops'l swollen and round
Swells out above, where the bunts divulge
The fores'l's snowy mound.
With a fill and a flap the jibs respond,
As she rolls a-weather, then rolls a-lee,
And her bone as she leaps is thrown beyond
The next o'ertaken sea.
And the hull beneath in its foamy ring
Is narrowed in by the spread of sail,
And the waves as they wash her seem to fling
Their heads above the rail.
And I hear the roar of the passing blast,
And the hiss and gush of the parted sea
Is mixed with the groan of the straining mast,
And the parrel's, che, che, che.
Of the weather deck where the old man strides,
From the break of the poop to the after-rail,
I can catch a glimpse, but all besides
Is hid by swelling sail.
For the wake abaft is shut behind,
Except when she yaws from her helm and throws;
Then like a green lane it seems to wind
Aheap with drifted snows.
But lo! as I gaze the weather clew
Of the topsail lifts to the watch's weight,
And the helmsman comes into perfect view,
And at his side the mate.
As I swing my eyes ahead again
For that one last look ere I drop below,
They catch as she lifts a grayish stain
Athwart the orange glow.
My heart leaps up at the welcome sight,
And I grasp the pole with a firmer hand,
And shading my eyes from the glancing light
Make sure that it is land.
It seems to dance, but I catch it still
As we lift to the sweep of a longer sea—
'Tis the windy top of a far-off hill
Whose shape is known to me.
Then I send a yell to the rolling deck,
And start all hands from their work below;
As I point with a rigid arm at the speck—
The cry comes back, "Land ho!"
And the mate looks up and gives a call,
The old man stops in his clock-like walk,
The watch lets up on the top-sail fall
And takes a spell of talk.
The skipper goes aft to the binnacle, where
He shapes his hand on the compass card,
And takes with a glance the bearing there,
Eying me on the yard.
And I stand with my right arm swinging out,
With a finger true on the dancing speck,
Until on my ears falls the ringing shout:
"All right! Lay down on deck!"
In the hush of the evening's cool?
It is a mermaid singing to me
As she sits in a silver pool.
As she sits in a silver pool and sings
Of the world I never shall see,
Where the dulse-weed clings,
And the star-fish rings
The red anemone;
The world which lies
Where human eyes
Are never allowed to see
The gold and gems
And fluted stems
Of the crimson coral tree—
Is that what she sings to me?
She is haunting and holding my heart with a strain,
Where joy lies asleep in the shadow of pain;
And the world that is under the sea
Is spreading its pleasures and treasures to gain
The love that lies dormant in me—
The love that I bear for the sea,
For the secret and sorrowful sea;
Is luring my feet from the gray land again
And filling my soul with the scent of the main,
The sound and the scent of the sea;
And the speech of the siren is spoken in vain,
For that mermaid is singing to me
Of the world that is under the sea;
And the love that I bear for the ocean again,
For the mournful and mutable sea,
Has taken possession of me:
My heart is enmeshed in the mystical strain
That mermaid is singing to me
Of the world that lies under the sea.
Ah, hark again! In a sadder strain
She is singing a song to me—
A song of the unseen sea;
She is singing of ships whose wrecks have lain
For ages in the sea,
In the depths of the sunless sea;
And her voice is soft with a thought of the pain
That song is giving to me.
A thought that I thought forever had lain
In the depths of the soundless sea
Is searching my soul in that mermaid's strain
And bringing a sorrow to me
From the world that is under the sea.
For I have a friend whose bones have lain
For ages in the sea,
(For so it seems to me),
And her song has opened that wound again
And brought back a sorrow to me—
From the depths of the endless sea.
A grief that is grieving my life again,
A thought that I thought, forever had lain,
And never come back to me,
Is searching my soul in that mermaid's strain
And bringing a sorrow to me
From the world that lies under the sea.
Oh, what comes flowing over the sea
In the hush of the evening's cool?
It is a mermaid singing to me
As she sits in a silver pool.
TRAFALGAR, 1805.
We hailed the morning starAbove the Spanish shore;
Our cannon's random roar
Then woke black Trafalgar.
Where our foes
Lay in the crescent bay
We watched the fog bank gray
Melt silently away
As the sun uprose.
Then rolled the deep alarm—
The foeman's call to arm;
And swiftly from our van
There pass'd from man to man,
"They will fight."
With hearts that beat to chase
We caught the growing gale,
And 'neath a press of sail
Bore up to take our place
On the right.
Nelson, our admiral then,
Greatest of all seamen,
We cheered to death again
As he pass'd;
'Round toward the land
We tacked and stood about—
The hills rang to our shout
As lifted and blew out
His last command
From the mast.
Then flash'd our full broadside,
Roaring across the tide,
As crashing side by side
We broke their line;
Thro' rolling clouds of smoke
Burst in our prows of oak;
Their tall sides bent and broke
Like pine.
As died the stagger'd blast
The sails dropt to the mast;
That broadside was their last!
One more to clip her wing!
Quick away!
Tigers our boarders spring,
Cutlass to cutlass ring,
In the fray.
We heard no quarter call:
A man stood every Gaul!
Useless, their flag must fall
That day.
The fight thus well begun,
We paused a breathing space;
Each soul leapt to a face
As Nelson in his grace
Signaled "Well done!"
Staying the tott'ring mast
We rounded to the blast,
Grappled the next that pass'd—
A huge Spaniard.
No room to lift the ports:
Black gun to gun retorts—
Lip locked to lip,
Each man a firmer grip
On his lanyard.
To save this pride of Spain
A Frenchman joined the fight;
Then roaring in our might
We smote him with our right
Twice, and again.
"Cease! Cease!" our Captain cries.
"She lies
A silent wreck!"
Three times we spared that foe,
Yet from her came the blow
That laid our hero low
On the deck.
What more for me to say,
Save thro' the fatal fray
We marked the hours that day
With cheers!
Our foes struck one by one;
Yet when the fight was done
We saw the misty sun
Set thro' our tears.
O England, strong yet free,
The crown we bear to thee,
Laurels for victory!
Weave cypress in the wreath:
For he to whom thou gave
The keeping of the wave,
Nelson, the true, the brave,
Has struck his flag to death.
Oh, men of hero race,
In what a fitting place
To set his conquering star!—
Amid the battle's roar,
Under the rolling shore
Where rises wild and hoar
Cape Trafalgar.
WHEN.
When western winds are blowing softAcross the Island Sound;
When every sail that draws aloft
Is swollen true and round;
When yellow shores along the lee
Slope upward to the sky;
When opal bright the land and sea
In changeful contact lie;
When idle yachts at anchor swim
Above a phantom shape;
When spires of canvas dot the rim
Which curves from cape to cape;
When sea-weed strewn the ebbing tide
Pours eastward to the main;
When clumsy coasters side by side
Tack in and out again—
When such a day is mine to live,
What has the world beyond to give?
THE FORSAKEN PORT.
Thro' all this perfect summer dayThe wind has blown from out the west,
And now the sunset fires invest
Where looms the mainland far away,
The old town right abreast.
The red-brown roofs and rugged spires
Uplift and pierce the sunset fires,
The old town right abreast.
The ships rise up, and sail, and sail,
Then drop beneath the distant rim—
The crimson rim.
We watch their topsails float and trail—
Like bubbles 'round a goblet's brim,
A moment there they rise and dip,
Then break against the sky's red lip.
Unhailed the ships go sailing by
The old town over there;
And yet it seems we hear a cry—
A heart-born cry
Of anguish and despair,
Of hope lost in despair.
In speechful grief the old town stands
And beckons with its outstretched hands
As the ships go sailing by.
Long years ago its port was thronged
With many a busy sail,
With rustling sail.
And many a heart has sighed and longed
For that old town's cheery hail—
Has sighed and longed for that old town's welcome hail.
Oh, where are they who left thy port
In strength of youth, in pride of love?
Side by side with a dark consort,
Calm seas below, blue skies above,
They tacked and stood across the bar:
Only the sea knows where they are—
Only the sea!
Perhaps at night the phantom ships—
Thy lost ships—come sailing in;
Their spectre crews with parted lips
That utter no sound, for the spell of death
Turns even a laugh to a grin.
Do they wait, and list for the din
Of the cheers and the bells to welcome them in—
For the cheers and the bells to welcome them in?
Do their dead hearts know hopes and fears?
Do they dream of the wives they've not seen for years?—
The wives and the sweethearts who watched them thro' tears
Sail away, sail away, when the wind was south
And the bar was blue at the harbor's mouth,
And the gulls flew low like flakes of snow,
And the summer wind bore the heave-yo-ho
Of the sailors brown
Into the town?
Are they here, the ones so dear?
Alas! the lips that their lips have known,
Alas! the hearts that once beat to their own
Are lying up on the hillside there,
And the daisies and grasses have overgrown
Their graves for many a year.
Yon sentinel pine that watches the graves
Where their wives and sweethearts are laid to rest
The wild winter wind defies and outbraves;
Its roots are sunk in some loved one's breast.
Are their souls at rest?
Sometimes, I think, they must wander down here
To watch for the ships that never will come.
In the silence of night they throng the old pier
To welcome the wanderers home;
Their lustreless eyes—
Enough of death and ghostly tales!
Oh, let the old town keep its vigil there,
Watching for those who were!
What though the dark ship with us sails—
Ah, fools, to freight our hearts with care!
To waste our breath in idle hails,
To cringe and cry.
We live for those who are, not were!—
We live to live, not die!
AN EARLY MOONSET.
Like galleon flying a picaroon,Along the edge the ship-shap'd moon
Leadeth a star across the sea
To the cloudy harbor under her lee.
With her splendid lading of golden light
She seems to dread the pirate Night;
With puffing sails and fretful oars
She steereth and speedeth for purple shores.
She will anchor to-night beneath the fort
Whose grim guns guard the cloudy port,
Where sound and safe from picaroon
Rides many an olden and golden moon.
ON THE BRIDGE.
Eight bells ring out from the fo'c'sle head;With a cheery good-eve the mate comes forth,
The second goes off to his welcome bed,
After giving the course as west by north.
As I stand with my chin on the dodger's ridge
And dreamily eye our plunging craft
There's a rattle of heels on the flying bridge
And a gruff report that the watch is aft.
"All right!" says the mate, with a glance below;
"Relieve the wheel and the lookout there!"
And then we begin, with our to and fro,
The walk and the talk we nightly share.
In silence at first—for our pipes are lit—
We pace and puff, and we pause and turn,
And it's up and down, for she rolls a bit
When flying light with the sea astern.
But there's a key in the hands of smoke
That fits a lock in the lazy brain,
And we spring the wards with a quiet joke
And rout out a store of yarns again.
Our voices ring with a pleasant sound,
And now and again it seems to me
As though in the roar that sweeps around
We are joined by the social sea.
And in that strange way that talk is bred—
As a few grains sown bring the wheaty stack—
So something afresh the other said
Put the roaming brain on another tack.
And we boxed about in an aimless way,
With a careless fling from sea to land,
And spoke of the world as a young man may
When he hasn't the time to understand.
We spoke of the land that gave us birth;
We spoke of the one that's home to me:
Those nations destined to shape the earth
To the single state it is to be—
Of tricks we played in our school-boy days;
The fun and frolic of being young;
How we jollied life in a hundred ways
With gibes that pleased and jests that stung.
And of those we loved—for now we knew
With half our life in the dim astern
Which lights were false and which lights were true,
And whose was the hand that bid them burn.
Of the rough hard life the sailor leads,
The pay he gets and the sharks ashore,
And what are the laws our shipping needs,
And the way things went in days of yore.
Of the sailing ship as she yet survives,
Of rigs we never shall see again,
Of inventions that save our seamen's lives
And murder the breed of sailor men.
We talk of these and of many a bout
When a crew came aft for a nasty row—
When loud comes a cry from the fore look-out
Of a light on the starboard bow.
"All right!" the response. Then we train our eyes
On the western rim thro' the closing night.
It's a steamer, sure, by the flash and size—
A liner's electric masthead light.
She rises fast, and is soon up well,
Rushing along 'neath a smoky pall,
A mass of lights like some huge hotel
Ablaze for its annual boarders' ball.
As she grows abeam—for we give her space,
For twenty knots is a right of way—
There's an answering glow on old ocean's face
And a glint on the waves in play.
And I think, as I watch her speed along,
Of the many lives she holds in trust,
And ponder what they would do, that throng,
If Fate should get in a deadly thrust.
A ship like ours or a sunken wreck—
A crash in the dark—some plates stove in—
A frightened rush for the upper deck,
And a clamorous, cowardly din!
How some would die as men should die,
How some would perish in selfish strife,
How some in that hour would dignify
By a noble close a worthless life.
How she whose vigor we oft deride—
The woman—would show her courage then,
And meet her death at her lover's side
In a way to shame the best of men.
But, Science be praised, it is seldom now
We lose a ship by a sudden crash,
For what with the lights and the whistle's row
We luckily dodge a general smash.
And that ship there, as she breasts the swell
And ghosts her side with a foamy ridge,
Has had many a shave—for logs don't tell
All the tales of a steamer's bridge.
In silence we watch her for quite a time
Until she becomes a smoky blear,
Then as ten rings out from the fo'c'sle chime
I go aft to my cheese and my beer.
MISSING.
A cloudless sky, a sleeping sea,A cold gray reach of shore,
A gleam of sail upon the lee—
And nothing more.
My eyes saw that, my heart saw more:
A woman whose quivering lip
Moulded this sentence o'er and o'er,
"God keep that ship!"
God keep that ship! Her prayer, not mine,
Goes out across the sea
To where beyond the misty line
A face is turned from me.
God keep that ship! Her ship, not mine—
Mine never came back to me.
MAKING LAND.
The fore-royal furled, I pause and I stand,Both feet on the yard, for a look around,
With eyes that ache for a sight of the land,
For we are homeward bound.
Like a bowl of silver the ocean lies,
Untouched by the fret of a single sail,
And over its edge the billows uprise
And slide before the gale.
I see, close beneath me, the garn's'l bulge,
And half of the tops'l swollen and round
Swells out above, where the bunts divulge
The fores'l's snowy mound.
With a fill and a flap the jibs respond,
As she rolls a-weather, then rolls a-lee,
And her bone as she leaps is thrown beyond
The next o'ertaken sea.
And the hull beneath in its foamy ring
Is narrowed in by the spread of sail,
And the waves as they wash her seem to fling
Their heads above the rail.
And I hear the roar of the passing blast,
And the hiss and gush of the parted sea
Is mixed with the groan of the straining mast,
And the parrel's, che, che, che.
Of the weather deck where the old man strides,
From the break of the poop to the after-rail,
I can catch a glimpse, but all besides
Is hid by swelling sail.
For the wake abaft is shut behind,
Except when she yaws from her helm and throws;
Then like a green lane it seems to wind
Aheap with drifted snows.
But lo! as I gaze the weather clew
Of the topsail lifts to the watch's weight,
And the helmsman comes into perfect view,
And at his side the mate.
As I swing my eyes ahead again
For that one last look ere I drop below,
They catch as she lifts a grayish stain
Athwart the orange glow.
My heart leaps up at the welcome sight,
And I grasp the pole with a firmer hand,
And shading my eyes from the glancing light
Make sure that it is land.
It seems to dance, but I catch it still
As we lift to the sweep of a longer sea—
'Tis the windy top of a far-off hill
Whose shape is known to me.
Then I send a yell to the rolling deck,
And start all hands from their work below;
As I point with a rigid arm at the speck—
The cry comes back, "Land ho!"
And the mate looks up and gives a call,
The old man stops in his clock-like walk,
The watch lets up on the top-sail fall
And takes a spell of talk.
The skipper goes aft to the binnacle, where
He shapes his hand on the compass card,
And takes with a glance the bearing there,
Eying me on the yard.
And I stand with my right arm swinging out,
With a finger true on the dancing speck,
Until on my ears falls the ringing shout:
"All right! Lay down on deck!"