THE DERELICT

1894

"And reports the derelict Mary Pollock' still at sea

I WAS the staunchest of our fleet

SHIPPING NEWS.

Till the sea rose beneath our feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
Into his pits he stamped my crew,
Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.

Man made me, and my will

Is to my maker still,

Whom now the currents con, the rollers steer

Lifting forlorn to spy

Trailed smoke along the sky,

Falling afraid lest

any keel come near!

Wrenched as the lips of thirst,

Wried, dried, and split and burst,

Bone-bleached my decks, wind-scoured to the graining; And jarred at every roll

The gear that was my soul

Answers the anguish of my beams' complaining.

For life that crammed me full,

Gangs of the prying gull

That shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches!

For roar that dumbed the gale,

My hawse-pipes' guttering wail,

Sobbing my heart out through the uncounted watches!

Blind in the hot blue ring

Through all my points I swing Swing and return to shift the sun anew. Blind in my well-known sky

I hear the stars go by,

Mocking the prow that cannot hold one true !

White on my wasted path

Wave after wave in wrath

Frets 'gainst his fellow, warring where to send me. Flung forward, heaved aside,

The

Witless and dazed I bide

mercy of the comber that shall end me.

North where the bergs careen,

The spray of seas unseen

Smokes round my head and freezes in the falling; South where the corals breed,

The footless, floating weed

Folds me and fouls me, strake on strake upcrawling.

I that was clean to run

My race against the sun ---

Strength on the deep-am bawd to all disaster;
Whipped forth by night to meet

My sister's careless feet,

And with a kiss betray her to my master!

Man made me, and my will

Is to my maker still

To him and his, our peoples at their pier:
Lifting in hope to spy

Trailed smoke along the sky,

Falling afraid lest any keel come near!

Coastwise

THE MERCHANTMEN

1893

KING SOLOMON drew merchantmen,

Because of his desire

For peacocks, apes, and ivory,
From Tarshish unto Tyre:
With cedars out of Lebanon
Which Hiram rafted down,
But we be only sailormen
That use in London town.

cross-seas

round the world and back again Where the flaw shall head us or the full Trade suits Plain-sail storm-sail lay your board and tack again And that's the way we'll pay Paddy Doyle for his boots!

We bring no store of ingots,

Of spice or precious stones,
But that we have we gathered
With sweat and aching bones:
In flame beneath the tropics,
In frost upon the floe,
And jeopardy of every wind
That does between them go.

And some we got by purchase,
And some we had by trade,
And some we found by courtesy
Of pike and carronade-
At midnight, 'mid-sea meetings,
For charity to keep,

And light the rolling homeward-bound
That rode a foot too deep!

By sport of bitter weather

We're walty, strained, and scarred From the kentledge on the kelson

To the slings upon the yard. Six oceans had their will of us To carry all away —

Our galley's in the Baltic,

And our boom's in Mossel Bay!

We've floundered off the Texel,
Awash with sodden deals,
We've slipped from Valparaiso
With the Norther at our heels:
We've ratched beyond the Crossets
That tusk the Southern Pole,
And dipped our gunnels under
To the dread Agulhas roll.

Beyond all outer charting

We sailed where none have sailed,
And saw the land-lights burning

On islands none have hailed;
Our hair stood up for wonder,
But, when the night was done,
There danced the deep to windward
Blue-empty 'neath the sun!

Strange consorts rode beside us
And brought us evil luck;
The witch-fire climbed our channels,
And flared on vane and truck:

Till, through the red tornado,
That lashed us nigh to blind,

We saw The Dutchman plunging,
Full canvas, head to wind!

We've heard the Midnight Leadsman That calls the black deep down —