“Who hath not cried ‘Thalassa’ in his soul?”
I am the son of Bor the Buccaneer,
Who frighted the first petrel to her lair,—
I bend my bows where danger drives most near,
My grave shall be where dying is most fair.
(O ye who prowl by sea-wind, hear ye this!)
Down the white way that marks the peril-line
I hear the mad white mermaids, drunk o’ the deep,
Those snarling, singing voices of the brine,
From throats that yawn for eyes that never sleep.
(O fickle mermaids of the barren kiss!)
I am the soul that flouts the overseas,
That curbs the wrenching billow-bits of Time,
My prow first pierced the strange Hesperides,
And that first keel of mine,—how deep in slime!
(O ye who slew by sunrise, mark ye now:)
Mine are the lips which Death’s grey lips have kissed
Deeply and often round his loving-cup;
I see his beckoning eyrie draped in mist
In every cloud that midnight conjures up.
(Yet, mark ye, Fear hath never stained my brow.)
I follow still the road that knows no dust,
I plague the wind-ways with unwearied sail,
And in my veins the flickering Wanderlust
Flames till the panting blood is stilled and pale:
(But ye who know me, know I may not die!)
Nay, till the One Wave roll again, as rolled
That first imperious ocean, I must drive
The dark, swart stallions of the Uncontrolled
Home to their stabling, conquered but alive.
(O ye who drave them longest, let me by!)