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THE DERELICT.

And reports the derelict Mary Pollock still at sea."

Shipping News.

I was the staunchest of our fleet
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 can not 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,

Witless and dazed I bide

The 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 fall

ing;

South where the corals breed,

The footless, floating weed

Folds me and fouls me, strake on strake upcrawl

ing.

I that was clean to run

My race against the sun

Strength on the deep, am bawd to all disasterWhipped 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!

THE SONG OF THE BANJO.

You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile-
You mustn't leave a fiddle in the damp-
You couldn't raft an organ up the Nile,
And play it in an Equatorial swamp.

I travel with the cooking-pots and pails—

I'm sandwiched 'tween the coffee and the

pork

And when the dusty column checks and tails, You should hear me spur the rearguard to a walk!

With my "Pilly-willy-winky-winky popp!''
[O it's any tune that comes into my
head!]

So I keep 'em moving forward till they
drop;

So I play 'em up to water and to bed.

In the silence of the camp before the fight,

When it's good to make your will and say

your prayer,

You can hear my strumpty-tumpty overnight
Explaining ten to one was always fair.
I'm the prophet of the Utterly Absurd,

Of the Patently Impossible and Vain—
And when the Thing that Couldn't has occurred,
Give me time to change my leg and go again.

With my "Tumpa- tumpa - tumpa- tum - pa tump!"

In the desert where the dung-fed camp

smoke curled

There was never voice before us till I led

our lonely chorus,

I-the war-drum of the White Man round the world!

By the bitter road the Younger Son must tread, Ere he win to hearth and saddle of his own,'Mid the riot of the shearers at the shed,

In the silence of the herder's hut alone

In the twilight, on a bucket upside down,

Hear me babble what the weakest won't con

fess

I am Memory and Torment-I am Town!

I am all that ever went with evening dress!

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