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The Burial of the Dane 1627

It is but a Danish sailor,

Rugged of front and form;

A common son of the forecastle,
Grizzled with sun and storm.

His name, and the strand he hailed from
We know, and there's nothing more!
But perhaps his mother is waiting
In the lonely Island of Fohr.

Still, as he lay there dying,
Reason drifting awreck,
""Tis my watch," he would mutter,
"I must go upon deck!"

Aye, on deck, by the foremast!

But watch and lookout are done;

The Union Jack laid o'er him,
How quiet he lies in the sun!

Slow the ponderous engine,
Stay the hurrying shaft;
Let the roll of the ocean
Cradle our giant craft;
Gather around the grating,
Carry your messmate aft!

Stand in order, and listen

To the holiest page of prayer!

Let every foot be quiet,
Every head be bare-

The soft trade-wind is lifting
A hundred locks of hair.

Our captain reads the service,

(A little spray on his cheeks)

The grand old words of burial,

And the trust a true heart seeks:→

"We therefore commit his body

To the deep"--and, as he speaks,

Launched from the weather railing,
Swift as the eye can mark,
The ghastly, shotted hammock
Plunges, away from the shark,
Down, a thousand fathoms,
Down into the dark!

A thousand summers and winters
The stormy Gulf shall roll
High o'er his canvas coffin;

But, silence to doubt and dole:-
There's a quiet harbor somewhere
For the poor aweary soul.

Free the fettered engine,
Speed the tireless shaft,
Loose to'gallant and topsail,
The breeze is fair abaft!

Blue sea all around us,

Blue sky bright o'erhead—

Every man to his duty,

We have buried our dead!

Henry Howard Brownell [1820-1872]

TOM BOWLING

HERE, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,

The darling of our crew;

No more he'll hear the tempest howling,
For death has broached him to.
His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful, below, he did his duty;
But now he's gone aloft.

Tom never from his word departed,

His virtues were so rare;

His friends were many and true-hearted,
His Poll was kind and fair:

Messmates

And then he'd sing, so blithe and jolly,
Ah, many's the time and oft!

But mirth is turned to melancholy,
For Tom is gone aloft.

Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,
When He, who all commands,

Shall give, to call Life's crew together,
The word to "pipe all hands."

Thus Death, who Kings and Tars despatches,
In vain Tom's life has doffed;

For, though his body's under hatches,

His soul is gone aloft.

1629

Charles Dibdin [1745-1814]

MESSMATES

He gave us all a good-by cheerily

At the first dawn of day;

We dropped him down the side full drearily

When the light died away.

It's a dead dark watch that he's a-keeping there,
And a long, long night that lags a-creeping there,
Where the Trades and the tides roll over him
And the great ships go by.

He's there alone with green seas rocking him
For a thousand miles around;

He's there alone with dumb things mocking him,
And we're homeward bound.

It's a long, lone watch that he's a-keeping there,
And a dead cold night that lags a-creeping there,
While the months and the years roll over him
And the great ships go by.

I wonder if the tramps come near enough,
As they thrash to and fro,

And the battleships' bells ring clear enough
To be heard down below;

If through all the lone watch that he's a-keeping there, And the long, cold night that lags a-creeping there, The voices of the sailor-men shall comfort him

When the great ships go by.

Henry Newbolt [1862

THE LAST BUCCANEER

OH, England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high,
But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I;
And such a port for mariners I ne'er shall see again
As the pleasant Isle of Avès, beside the Spanish main.

There were forty craft in Avès that were both swift and stout,
All furnished well with small arms and cannons round about;
And a thousand men in Avès made laws so fair and free
To choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.

Thence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold,

Which he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old; Likewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone, Who flog men and keelhaul them, and starve them to the bone.

Oh, the palms grew high in Avès, and fruits that shone like gold,

And the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold; And the negro maids to Avès from bondage fast did flee, To welcome gallant sailors, a-sweeping in from sea.

Oh, sweet it was in Avès to hear the landward breeze,
A-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees,
With a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar
Of the breakers on the reef outside, that never touched the
shore.

But Scripture saith, an ending to all fine things must be; So the King's ships sailed on Avès, and quite put down were

we.

The Last Buccaneer

1631

All day we fought like bulldogs, but they burst the booms at

night;

And I fled in a piragua, sore wounded, from the fight.

Nine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside,
Till for all I tried to cheer her, the poor young thing she died;
But as I lay a-gasping, a Bristol sail came by,

And brought me home to England here, to beg until I die.

And now I'm old and going-I'm sure I can't tell where; One comfort is, this world's so hard, I can't be worse off there:

If I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main,
To the pleasant Isle of Avès, to look at it once again.
Charles Kingsley [1819-1875]

THE LAST BUCCANEER

THE winds were yelling, the waves were swelling,

The sky was black and drear,

When the crew with eyes of flame brought the ship without a

name

Alongside the last Buccaneer.

"Whence flies your sloop full sail before so fierce a gale,
When all others drive bare on the seas?

Say, come ye from the shore of the holy Salvador,
Or the gulf of the rich Caribbees?"

"From a shore no search hath found, from a gulf no line can sound,

Without rudder or needle we steer;

Above, below our bark dies the sea-fowl and the shark.
As we fly by the last Buccaneer.

"To-night there shall be heard on the rocks of Cape de Verde A loud crash and a louder roar;

And to-morrow shall the deep with a heavy moaning sweep The corpses and wreck to the shore."

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