tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14346328333346112024-03-12T18:48:34.281-04:00Sail Poet | sailpoet.comSailing Poems, Poetry, Poets, Sail PoetUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-78954459277066371122014-12-06T20:02:00.000-05:002014-12-06T20:02:06.881-05:00Sailing Poems, Poetry, Poets<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/01/a-ballad-of-boding.html">A Ballad of Boding</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/07/a-ballad-of-john-silver-1902-by-john.html">A Ballad of John Silver (1902) by John Masefield...</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/11/a-channel-passage-by-algernon-charles.html">A Channel Passage by Algernon Charles Swinburne</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/06/a-consecration-1902-by-john-masefield.html">A Consecration (1902) by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/06/a-night-at-dago-toms-by-john-masefield.html">A Night at Dago Tom's by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/05/a-pier-head-chorus-by-john-masefield.html">A Pier-Head Chorus by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/10/a-sailors-song.html">A Sailor’s Song</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/09/a-song-at-parting-from-salt-water.html">A Song at Parting (from Salt Water Ballads) (1902...</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/05/a-valediction-liverpool-docks-by-john.html">A Valediction (Liverpool Docks) by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/03/a-wanderers-song-by-john-masefield.html">A Wanderer's Song by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/09/bill-1902-by-john-masefield.html">Bill (1902) by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/10/biography-by-john-masefield.html">Biography by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/04/burial-party-by-john-masefield.html">Burial-Party by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/08/captain-strattons-fancy-by-john.html">Captain Stratton's Fancy by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/08/cargoes-by-john-masefield.html">Cargoes by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/10/crossing-bar-alfred-lord-tennyson-1889.html">Crossing the Bar, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1889)</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/02/dover-beach.html">Dover Beach</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/05/evening-regatta-day-1918-by-john.html">Evening - Regatta Day (1918) by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/07/hells-pavement-by-john-masefield.html">Hell's Pavement by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/03/ithaka.html">Ithaka</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/08/mother-carey-by-john-masefield.html">Mother Carey by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/02/o-captain-my-captain.html">O Captain! My Captain!</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/08/on-eastnor-knoll-by-john-masefield.html">On Eastnor Knoll by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/04/sea-change-by-john-masefield.html">Sea-Change by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2013/12/sea-fever.html">Sea-Fever</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/11/sea-heroes.html">Sea-Heroes</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/06/sing-song-o-shipwreck-1902-by-john.html">Sing a Song o' Shipwreck (1902) by John Masefiel...</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/02/song-for-all-seas-all-ships.html">Song for All Seas, All Ships</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/07/sorrow-of-mydath-by-john-masefield.html">Sorrow of Mydath by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/09/spanish-waters-by-john-masefield.html">Spanish Waters by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/04/terminus-by-ralph-waldo-emerson.html">Terminus by Ralph Waldo Emerson</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/08/tewkesbury-road-by-john-masefield.html">Tewkesbury Road by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/09/the-ballad-of-sir-bors-by-john-masefield.html">The Ballad of Sir Bors by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/11/the-convergence-of-twain-by-thomas.html">The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy (1915...</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/07/the-golden-city-of-st-mary-by-john.html">The Golden City of St. Mary by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/10/the-island-of-skyros-john-masefield.html">THE ISLAND OF SKYROS, John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/11/the-mystic-blue-by-dh-lawrence-1916.html">The Mystic Blue by D.H. Lawrence (1916)</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/03/the-rime-of-ancient-mariner.html">The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/02/the-sailor-boy.html">The Sailor Boy</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/11/the-sea-hold-by-carl-sandburg.html">The Sea Hold by Carl Sandburg</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/12/the-seafarer-by-ezra-pound-from.html">The Seafarer by Ezra Pound (from Ripostes, 1912)</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/03/the-secret-of-sea.html">The Secret of the Sea</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/04/the-west-wind-by-john-masefield.html">The West Wind by John Masefield</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/06/the-yarn-of-loch-achray-1902-by-john.html">The Yarn of the "Loch Achray" (1902) by John Mas...</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/03/trade-winds.html">Trade Winds</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.sailpoet.com/2014/06/vision-by-john-masefield.html">Vision by John Masefield</a><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-81154964658017248312014-12-06T00:00:00.000-05:002014-12-06T00:00:00.933-05:00The Seafarer by Ezra Pound (from Ripostes, 1912)The Seafarer<br />
<br />
<i>by Ezra Pound (from Ripostes, 1912)</i><br />
<br />
May I for my own self song’s truth reckon,<br />
Journey’s jargon, how I in harsh days<br />
Hardship endured oft.<br />
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,<br />
Known on my keel many a care’s hold,<br />
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent<br />
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship’s head<br />
While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,<br />
My feet were by frost benumbed.<br />
Chill its chains are; chafing sighs<br />
Hew my heart round and hunger begot<br />
Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not<br />
That he on dry land loveliest liveth,<br />
List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,<br />
Weathered the winter, wretched outcast<br />
Deprived of my kinsmen;<br />
Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew,<br />
There I heard naught save the harsh sea<br />
And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries,<br />
Did for my games the gannet’s clamour,<br />
Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter,<br />
The mews’ singing all my mead-drink.<br />
Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern<br />
In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed<br />
With spray on his pinion.<br />
Not any protector<br />
May make merry man faring needy.<br />
This he little believes, who aye in winsome life<br />
Abides ’mid burghers some heavy business,<br />
Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft<br />
Must bide above brine.<br />
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north,<br />
Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then<br />
Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now<br />
The heart’s thought that I on high streams<br />
The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.<br />
Moaneth alway my mind’s lust<br />
That I fare forth, that I afar hence<br />
Seek out a foreign fastness.<br />
For this there’s no mood-lofty man over earth’s midst,<br />
Not though he be given his good, but will have in his youth greed;<br />
Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faithful<br />
But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare<br />
Whatever his lord will.<br />
He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having<br />
Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world’s delight<br />
Nor any whit else save the wave’s slash,<br />
Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water.<br />
Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries,<br />
Fields to fairness, land fares brisker,<br />
All this admonisheth man eager of mood,<br />
The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks<br />
On flood-ways to be far departing.<br />
Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying,<br />
He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow,<br />
The bitter heart’s blood. Burgher knows not —<br />
He the prosperous man — what some perform<br />
Where wandering them widest draweth.<br />
So that but now my heart burst from my breast-lock,<br />
My mood ’mid the mere-flood,<br />
Over the whale’s acre, would wander wide.<br />
On earth’s shelter cometh oft to me,<br />
Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer,<br />
Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly,<br />
O’er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow<br />
My lord deems to me this dead life<br />
On loan and on land, I believe not<br />
That any earth-weal eternal standeth<br />
Save there be somewhat calamitous<br />
That, ere a man’s tide go, turn it to twain.<br />
Disease or oldness or sword-hate<br />
Beats out the breath from doom-gripped body.<br />
And for this, every earl whatever, for those speaking after —<br />
Laud of the living, boasteth some last word,<br />
That he will work ere he pass onward,<br />
Frame on the fair earth ’gainst foes his malice,<br />
Daring ado, ...<br />
So that all men shall honour him after<br />
And his laud beyond them remain ’mid the English,<br />
Aye, for ever, a lasting life’s-blast,<br />
Delight mid the doughty.<br />
Days little durable,<br />
And all arrogance of earthen riches,<br />
There come now no kings nor Cæsars<br />
Nor gold-giving lords like those gone.<br />
Howe’er in mirth most magnified,<br />
Whoe’er lived in life most lordliest,<br />
Drear all this excellence, delights undurable!<br />
Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth.<br />
Tomb hideth trouble. The blade is layed low.<br />
Earthly glory ageth and seareth.<br />
No man at all going the earth’s gait,<br />
But age fares against him, his face paleth,<br />
Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone companions,<br />
Lordly men are to earth o’ergiven,<br />
Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth,<br />
Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry,<br />
Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart,<br />
And though he strew the grave with gold,<br />
His born brothers, their buried bodies<br />
Be an unlikely treasure hoard.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-52778355899482586092014-11-29T00:00:00.000-05:002014-11-29T00:00:03.882-05:00A Channel Passage by Algernon Charles SwinburneA Channel Passage<br />
<br />
<i>by Algernon Charles Swinburne (from A Channel Passage and Other Poems, 1904)</i><br />
<br />
Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn shone,<br />
Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone:<br />
Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hour<br />
Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a field in flower.<br />
Stars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music: the starbright air<br />
Made the face of the sea, if aught may make the face of the sea, more fair.<br />
<br />
Whence came change? Was the sweet night weary of rest? What anguish awoke in the dark?<br />
Sudden, sublime, the strong storm spake: we heard the thunders as hounds that bark.<br />
Lovelier if aught may be lovelier than stars, we saw the lightnings exalt the sky,<br />
Living and lustrous and rapturous as love that is born but to quicken and lighten and die.<br />
Heaven’s own heart at its highest of delight found utterance in music and semblance in fire:<br />
Thunder on thunder exulted, rejoicing to live and to satiate the night’s desire.<br />
<br />
And the night was alive and anhungered of life as a tiger from toils cast free:<br />
And a rapture of rage made joyous the spirit and strength of the soul of the sea.<br />
All the weight of the wind bore down on it, freighted with death for fraught:<br />
And the keen waves kindled and quickened as things transfigured or things distraught.<br />
And madness fell on them laughing and leaping; and madness came on the wind:<br />
And the might and the light and the darkness of storm were as storm in the heart of Ind.<br />
Such glory, such terror, such passion, as lighten and harrow the far fierce East,<br />
Rang, shone, spake, shuddered around us: the night was an altar with death for priest.<br />
The channel that sunders England from shores where never was man born free<br />
Was clothed with the likeness and thrilled with the strength and the wrath of a tropic sea.<br />
As a wild steed ramps in rebellion, and rears till it swerves from a backward fall,<br />
The strong ship struggled and reared, and her deck was upright as a sheer cliff’s wall.<br />
<br />
Stern and prow plunged under, alternate: a glimpse, a recoil, a breath,<br />
And she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the throat of death.<br />
Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal joy,<br />
Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird’s heart in a boy.<br />
For the central crest of the night was cloud that thundered and flamed, sublime<br />
As the splendour and song of the soul everlasting that quickens the pulse of time.<br />
The glory beholden of man in a vision, the music of light overheard,<br />
The rapture and radiance of battle, the life that abides in the fire of a word,<br />
In the midmost heaven enkindled, was manifest far on the face of the sea,<br />
And the rage in the roar of the voice of the waters was heard but when heaven breathed free.<br />
<br />
Far eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out into light<br />
From the rims of the storm to the sea’s dark edge with flames that were flowerlike and white.<br />
The leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that laugh as they fade<br />
From the cloud’s black base to the black wave’s brim rejoiced in the light they made.<br />
Far westward, throned in a silent sky, where life was in lustrous tune,<br />
Shone, sweeter and surer than morning or evening, the steadfast smile of the moon.<br />
The limitless heaven that enshrined them was lovelier than dreams may behold, and deep<br />
As life or as death, revealed and transfigured, may shine on the soul through sleep.<br />
All glories of toil and of triumph and passion and pride that it yearns to know<br />
Bore witness there to the soul of its likeness and kinship, above and below.<br />
<br />
The joys of the lightnings, the songs of the thunders, the strong sea’s labour and rage,<br />
Were tokens and signs of the war that is life and is joy for the soul to wage.<br />
No thought strikes deeper or higher than the heights and the depths that the night made bare,<br />
Illimitable, infinite, awful and joyful, alive in the summit of air—<br />
Air stilled and thrilled by the tempest that thundered between its reign and the sea’s,<br />
Rebellious, rapturous, and transient as faith or as terror that bows men’s knees.<br />
No love sees loftier and fairer the form of its godlike vision in dreams<br />
Than the world shone then, when the sky and the sea were as love for a breath’s length seems—<br />
One utterly, mingled and mastering and mastered and laughing with love that subsides<br />
As the glad mad night sank panting and satiate with storm, and released the tides.<br />
<br />
In the dense mid channel the steam-souled ship hung hovering, assailed and withheld<br />
As a soul born royal, if life or if death be against it, is thwarted and quelled.<br />
As the glories of myriads of glowworms in lustrous grass on a boundless lawn<br />
Were the glories of flames phosphoric that made of the water a light like dawn.<br />
A thousand Phosphors, a thousand Hespers, awoke in the churning sea,<br />
And the swift soft hiss of them living and dying was clear as a tune could be;<br />
As a tune that is played by the fingers of death on the keys of life or of sleep,<br />
Audible alway alive in the storm, too fleet for a dream to keep:<br />
Too fleet, too sweet for a dream to recover and thought to remember awake:<br />
Light subtler and swifter than lightning, that whispers and laughs in the live storm’s wake,<br />
In the wild bright wake of the storm, in the dense loud heart of the labouring hour,<br />
A harvest of stars by the storm’s hand reaped, each fair as a star-shaped flower.<br />
And sudden and soft as the passing of sleep is the passing of tempest seemed<br />
When the light and the sound of it sank, and the glory was gone as a dream half dreamed.<br />
The glory, the terror, the passion that made of the midnight a miracle, died,<br />
Not slain at a stroke, nor in gradual reluctance abated of power and of pride;<br />
With strong swift subsidence, awful as power that is wearied of power upon earth,<br />
As a God that were wearied of power upon heaven, and were fain of a new God’s birth,<br />
The might of the night subsided: the tyranny kindled in darkness fell:<br />
And the sea and the sky put off them the rapture and radiance of heaven and of hell.<br />
<br />
The waters, heaving and hungering at heart, made way, and were wellnigh fain,<br />
For the ship that had fought them, and wrestled, and revelled in labour, to cease from her pain.<br />
And an end was made of it: only remembrance endures of the glad loud strife;<br />
And the sense that a rapture so royal may come not again in the passage of life.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-41513579001699106472014-11-22T00:00:00.000-05:002014-11-22T00:00:07.044-05:00The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy (1915)The Convergence of the Twain<br />
<i>by Thomas Hardy (1915)</i><br />
<br />
(Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”)<br />
<br />
I<br />
In a solitude of the sea<br />
Deep from human vanity,<br />
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.<br />
<br />
II<br />
Steel chambers, late the pyres<br />
Of her salamandrine fires,<br />
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.<br />
<br />
III<br />
Over the mirrors meant<br />
To glass the opulent<br />
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.<br />
<br />
IV<br />
Jewels in joy designed<br />
To ravish the sensuous mind<br />
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.<br />
<br />
V<br />
Dim moon-eyed fishes near<br />
Gaze at the gilded gear<br />
And query: “What does this vain gloriousness down here?” ...<br />
<br />
VI<br />
Well: while was fashioning<br />
This creature of cleaving wing,<br />
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything<br />
<br />
VII<br />
Prepared a sinister mate<br />
For her — so gaily great —<br />
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.<br />
<br />
VIII<br />
And as the smart ship grew<br />
In stature, grace, and hue,<br />
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.<br />
<br />
IX<br />
Alien they seemed to be;<br />
No mortal eye could see<br />
The intimate welding of their later history,<br />
<br />
X<br />
Or sign that they were bent<br />
By paths coincident<br />
On being anon twin halves of one august event,<br />
<br />
XI<br />
Till the Spinner of the Years<br />
Said “Now!” And each one hears,<br />
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-78046135362036049222014-11-15T00:00:00.000-05:002014-11-15T00:00:06.004-05:00The Mystic Blue by D.H. Lawrence (1916)The Mystic Blue<br />
<i>by D.H. Lawrence (1916)</i><br />
<br />
Out of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping,<br />
Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping<br />
To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.<br />
<br />
Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel<br />
Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel<br />
Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel.<br />
<br />
And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue crops<br />
Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops.<br />
<br />
And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes,<br />
The rainbow arching over in the skies,<br />
New sparks of wonder opening in surprise.<br />
<br />
All these pure things come foam and spray of the sea<br />
Of Darkness abundant, which shaken mysteriously,<br />
Breaks into dazzle of living, as dolphins that leap from the sea<br />
Of midnight shake it to fire, so the secret of death we see.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-35921823272276568392014-11-09T00:00:00.000-05:002014-11-09T00:00:00.033-05:00Sea-HeroesSea-Heroes<br />
<i>by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)(from Coterie, 1920)</i><br />
<br />
Crash on crash of the sea,<br />
straining to wreck men; sea-boards, continents,<br />
raging against the world, furious,<br />
stay at last, for against your fury<br />
and your mad fight,<br />
the line of heroes stands, godlike:<br />
<br />
Akroneos, Oknolos, Elatreus,<br />
helm-of-boat, loosener-of-helm, dweller-by-sea,<br />
Nauteus, sea-man,<br />
Prumneos, stern-of-ship,<br />
Agchilalos, sea-girt,<br />
Elatreus, oar-shaft:<br />
lover-of-the-sea, lover-of-the-sea-ebb,<br />
lover-of-the-swift-sea,<br />
Ponteus, Proreus, Oöos:<br />
Anabesneos, who breaks to anger<br />
as a wave to froth:<br />
Amphiolos, one caught between<br />
wave-shock and wave-shock:<br />
Eurualos, board sea-wrack,<br />
like Ares, man’s death,<br />
and Naubolidos, best in shape,<br />
of all first in size:<br />
Phaekous, sea’s thunderbolt—<br />
ah, crash on crash of great names—<br />
man-tamer, man’s-help, perfect Laodamos:<br />
and last the sons of great Alkinöos,<br />
Laodamos, Halios, and god-like Clytomeos.<br />
<br />
Of all nations, of all cities,<br />
of all continents,<br />
she is favoured above the rest,<br />
for she gives men as great as the sea,<br />
to battle against the elements and evil:<br />
greater even than the sea,<br />
they live beyond wrack and death of cities,<br />
and each god-like name spoken<br />
is as a shrine in a godless place.<br />
<br />
But to name you,<br />
we, reverent, are breathless,<br />
weak with pain and old loss,<br />
and exile and despair—<br />
our hearts break but to speak<br />
your name, Oknaleos—<br />
and may we but call you in the feverish wrack<br />
of our storm-strewn beach, Eretmeos,<br />
our hurt is quiet and our hearts tamed,<br />
as the sea may yet be tamed,<br />
and we vow to float great ships,<br />
named for each hero,<br />
and oar-blades, cut of mountain-trees<br />
as such men might have shaped:<br />
Eretmeos, and the sea is swept,<br />
baffled by the lordly shape,<br />
Akroneos has pines for his ship’s keel;<br />
to love, to mate the sea?<br />
Ah there is Ponteos,<br />
the very deep roar,<br />
hailing you dear—<br />
they clamour to Ponteos,<br />
and to Proëos<br />
leap, swift to kiss, to curl, to creep,<br />
lover to mistress.<br />
<br />
What wave, what love, what foam,<br />
For Oöos who moves swift as the sea?<br />
Ah stay, my heart, the weight<br />
of lovers, of loneliness<br />
drowns me,<br />
alas that their very names<br />
so press to break my heart<br />
with heart-sick weariness,<br />
what would they be,<br />
the very gods,<br />
rearing their mighty length<br />
beside the unharvested sea?<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-65038021269850726212014-11-02T00:00:00.000-04:002014-11-02T00:00:00.830-04:00The Sea Hold by Carl SandburgThe Sea Hold<br />
<i>by Carl Sandburg (from Cornhuskers, 1918)</i><br />
<br />
The sea is large.<br />
The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the oyster beds and the late clam boats of lonely men.<br />
Five white houses on a half-mile strip of land... five white dice rolled from a tube.<br />
<br />
Not so long ago the sea was large...<br />
And to-day the sea has lost nothing... it keeps all.<br />
<br />
I am a loon about the sea.<br />
I make so many sea songs, I cry so many sea cries, I forget so many sea songs and sea cries.<br />
<br />
I am a loon about the sea.<br />
So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tar-paper shack trembling in a sand storm.<br />
<br />
The sea knows more about them than they know themselves.<br />
They know only how the sea hugs and will not let go.<br />
<br />
The sea is large.<br />
The sea must know more than any of us.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-86323509568313222512014-10-26T00:00:00.000-04:002014-10-26T00:00:00.487-04:00Crossing the Bar, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1889)<i>Crossing the Bar</i><br />
<br />
Sunset and evening star,<br />
And one clear call for me!<br />
And may there be no moaning of the bar,<br />
When I put out to sea,<br />
<br />
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,<br />
Too full for sound and foam,<br />
When that which drew from out the boundless deep<br />
Turns again home.<br />
<br />
Twilight and evening bell,<br />
And after that the dark!<br />
And may there be no sadness of farewell,<br />
When I embark;<br />
<br />
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place<br />
The flood may bear me far,<br />
I hope to see my Pilot face to face<br />
When I have crossed the bar.<br />
<br />
--by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1889)<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-33116589403020865442014-10-19T00:00:00.000-04:002014-10-19T00:00:02.500-04:00A Sailor’s Song<i>A Sailor’s Song</i><br />
<br />
Oh for the breath of the briny deep,<br />
And the tug of a bellying sail,<br />
With the sea-gull’s cry across the sky<br />
And a passing boatman’s hail.<br />
For, be she fierce or be she gay,<br />
The sea is a famous friend alway.<br />
<br />
Ho! For the plains where the dolphins play,<br />
And the bend of the mast and spars,<br />
And a fight at night with the wild sea-sprite<br />
When the foam has drowned the stars.<br />
And, pray, what joy can the landsman feel<br />
Like the rise and fall of a sliding keel?<br />
<br />
Fair is the mead; the lawn is fair<br />
And the birds sing sweet on the lea;<br />
But echo soft of a song aloft<br />
Is the strain that pleases me;<br />
And swish of rope and ring of chain<br />
Are music to men who sail the main.<br />
<br />
Then, if you love me, let me sail<br />
While a vessel dares the deep;<br />
For the ship’s wife, and the breath of life<br />
Are the raging gales that sweep;<br />
And when I’m done with the calm and blast,<br />
A slide o’er the side, and rest at last.<br />
<br />
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (from Lyrics of the Hearthside, 1899)<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-40182094434343601812014-10-12T00:00:00.000-04:002014-10-12T00:00:02.675-04:00THE ISLAND OF SKYROS, John MasefieldTHE ISLAND OF SKYROS<br />
<br />
HERE, where we stood together, we three men,<br />
Before the war had swept us to the East<br />
Three thousand miles away, I stand again<br />
And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast.<br />
We trod the same path, to the selfsame place,<br />
Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves,<br />
Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase,<br />
And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves.<br />
So, since we communed here, our bones have been<br />
Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be,<br />
Earth and the worldwide battle lie between,<br />
Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea.<br />
Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood<br />
As I stand now, with pulses beating blood.<br />
<br />
I saw her like a shadow on the sky<br />
In the last light, a blur upon the sea,<br />
Then the gale's darkness put the shadow by,<br />
But from one grave that island talked to me;<br />
And, in the midnight, in the breaking storm,<br />
I saw its blackness and a blinking light,<br />
And thought, "So death obscures your gentle form,<br />
So memory strives to make the darkness bright;<br />
And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies,<br />
Part of the island till the planet ends,<br />
My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise,<br />
Part of this crag this bitter surge offends,<br />
While I, who pass, a little obscure thing,<br />
War with this force, and breathe, and am its king."<br />
<br />
--John Masefield<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-83015814251796040522014-10-05T00:00:00.000-04:002014-10-05T00:00:01.938-04:00Biography by John MasefieldBiography<br />
<i>by John Masefield</i><br />
<br />
When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts<br />
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts,<br />
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten<br />
The dates which made me will be all forgotten;<br />
And none will know the gleam there used to be<br />
About the feast days freshly kept by me,<br />
But men will call the golden hour of bliss<br />
"About this time," or "shortly after this."<br />
<br />
Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb<br />
Those glittering steps, those milestones upon time,<br />
Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,<br />
Those moments of the soul in years of earth.<br />
They mark the height achieved, the main result,<br />
The power of freedom in the perished cult,<br />
The power of boredom in the dead man’s deeds<br />
Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.<br />
<br />
By many waters and on many ways<br />
I have known golden instants and bright days;<br />
The day on which, beneath an arching sail,<br />
I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail;<br />
The summer day on which in heart’s delight<br />
I saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white,<br />
The glittering day when all the waves wore flags<br />
And the ship Wanderer came with sails in rags;<br />
That curlew-calling time in Irish dusk<br />
When life became more splendid than its husk,<br />
When the rent chapel on the brae at Slains<br />
Shone with a doorway opening beyond brains;<br />
The dawn when, with a brace-block’s creaking cry,<br />
Out of the mist a little barque slipped by,<br />
Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red,<br />
Then gone, with one raised hand and one turned head;<br />
The howling evening when the spindrift’s mists<br />
Broke to display the four Evangelists,<br />
Snow-capped, divinely granite, lashed by breakers,<br />
Wind-beaten bones of long-since-buried acres;<br />
The night alone near water when I heard<br />
All the sea’s spirit spoken by a bird;<br />
The English dusk when I beheld once more<br />
(With eyes so changed) the ship, the citied shore,<br />
The lines of masts, the streets so cheerly trod<br />
In happier seasons, and gave thanks to God.<br />
All had their beauty, their bright moments” gift,<br />
Their something caught from Time, the ever-swift.<br />
<br />
All of those gleams were golden; but life’s hands<br />
Have given more constant gifts in changing lands;<br />
And when I count those gifts, I think them such<br />
As no man’s bounty could have bettered much:<br />
The gift of country life, near hills and woods<br />
Where happy waters sing in solitudes,<br />
The gift of being near ships, of seeing each day<br />
A city of ships with great ships under weigh,<br />
The great street paved with water, filled with shipping,<br />
And all the world’s flags flying and seagulls dipping.<br />
<br />
Yet when I am dust my penman may not know<br />
Those water-trampling ships which made me glow,<br />
But think my wonder mad and fail to find,<br />
Their glory, even dimly, from my mind,<br />
And yet they made me. Not alone the ships,<br />
But men hard-palmed from tallying-on to whips,<br />
The two close friends of nearly twenty years<br />
Sea-followers both, sea-wrestlers and sea-peers,<br />
Whose feet with mine wore many a bolthead bright<br />
Treading the decks beneath the riding light.<br />
Yet death will make that warmth of friendship cold,<br />
And who’ll know what one said and what one told,<br />
Our hearts” communion, and the broken spells<br />
When the loud call blew at the strike of bells?<br />
No one, I know, yet let me be believed,<br />
A soul entirely known is life achieved.<br />
<br />
Years blank with hardship never speak a word<br />
Live in the soul to make the being stirred;<br />
Towns can be prisons where the spirit dulls<br />
Away from mates and ocean-wandering hulls,<br />
Away from all bright water and great hills<br />
And sheep-walks where the curlews cry their fills;<br />
Away in towns, where eyes have nought to see<br />
But dead museums and miles of misery<br />
And floating life un-rooted from man’s need<br />
And miles of fish-hooks baited to catch greed<br />
And life made wretched out of human ken<br />
And miles of shopping women served by men.<br />
So, if the penman sums my London days,<br />
Let him but say that there were holy ways,<br />
Dull Bloomsbury streets of dull brick mansions old<br />
With stinking doors where women stood to scold<br />
And drunken waits at Christmas with their horn<br />
Droning the news, in snow, that Christ was born;<br />
And windy gas lamps and the wet roads shining<br />
And that old carol of the midnight whining,<br />
And that old room above the noisy slum<br />
Where there was wine and fire and talk with some<br />
Under strange pictures of the wakened soul<br />
To whom this earth was but a burnt-out coal.<br />
<br />
<br />
O Time, bring back those midnights and those friends,<br />
Those glittering moments that a spirit lends,<br />
That all may be imagined from the flash,<br />
The cloud-hid god-game through the lightning gash;<br />
Those hours of stricken sparks from which men took<br />
Light to send out to men in song or book;<br />
Those friends who heard St. Pancras’ bells strike two,<br />
Yet stayed until the barber’s cockerel crew,<br />
Talking of noble styles, the Frenchman’s best,<br />
The thought beyond great poets not expressed,<br />
The glory of mood where human frailty failed,<br />
The forts of human light not yet assailed,<br />
Till the dim room had mind and seemed to brood,<br />
Binding our wills to mental brotherhood;<br />
Till we became a college, and each night<br />
Was discipline and manhood and delight;<br />
Till our farewells and winding down the stairs<br />
At each grey dawn had meaning that Time spares<br />
That we, so linked, should roam the whole world round<br />
Teaching the ways our brooding minds had found,<br />
Making that room our Chapter, our one mind<br />
Where all that this world soiled should be refined.<br />
<br />
Often at night I tread those streets again<br />
And see the alleys glimmering in the rain,<br />
Yet now I miss that sign of earlier tramps,<br />
A house with shadows of plane-boughs under lamps,<br />
The secret house where once a beggar stood,<br />
Trembling and blind, to show his woe for food.<br />
And now I miss that friend who used to walk<br />
Home to my lodgings with me, deep in talk,<br />
Wearing the last of night out in still streets<br />
Trodden by us and policemen on their beats<br />
And cats, but else deserted; now I miss<br />
That lively mind and guttural laugh of his<br />
And that strange way he had of making gleam,<br />
Like something real, the art we used to dream.<br />
<br />
London has been my prison; but my books<br />
Hills and great waters, labouring men and brooks,<br />
Ships and deep friendships and remembered days<br />
Which even now set all my mind ablaze,<br />
As that June day when, in the red bricks” chinks<br />
I saw the old Roman ruins white with pinks<br />
And felt the hillside haunted even then<br />
By not dead memory of the Roman men;<br />
And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen<br />
Who knew the interest in me, and were keen<br />
That man alive should understand man dead<br />
So many centuries since the blood was shed,<br />
And quickened with strange hush because this comer<br />
Sensed a strange soul alive behind the summer.<br />
<br />
That other day on Ercall when the stones<br />
Were sunbleached white, like long unburied bones,<br />
While the bees droned and all the air was sweet<br />
From honey buried underneath my feet,<br />
Honey of purple heather and white clover<br />
Sealed in its gummy bags till summer’s over.<br />
Then other days by water, by bright sea,<br />
Clear as clean glass, and my bright friend with me;<br />
The cove clean bottomed where we saw the brown<br />
Red spotted plaice go skimming six feet down,<br />
And saw the long fronds waving, white with shells,<br />
Waving, unfolding, drooping, to the swells;<br />
That sadder day when we beheld the great<br />
And terrible beauty of a Lammas spate<br />
Roaring white-mouthed in all the great cliff’s gaps,<br />
Headlong, tree-tumbling fury of collapse,<br />
While drenching clouds drove by and every sense<br />
Was water roaring or rushing or in offence,<br />
And mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamed<br />
Where torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed.<br />
That sadder day when we beheld again<br />
A spate going down in sunshine after rain<br />
When the blue reach of water leaping bright<br />
Was one long ripple and clatter, flecked with white.<br />
And that far day, that never blotted page<br />
When youth was bright like flowers about old age,<br />
Fair generations bringing thanks for life<br />
To that old kindly man and trembling wife<br />
After their sixty years: Time never made<br />
A better beauty since the Earth was laid,<br />
Than that thanksgiving given to grey hair<br />
For the great gift of life which brought them there.<br />
<br />
<br />
Days of endeavour have been good: the days<br />
Racing in cutters for the comrade’s praise.<br />
The day they led my cutter at the turn,<br />
Yet could not keep the lead, and dropped astern;<br />
The moment in the spurt when both boats’ oars<br />
Dipped in each other’s wash, and throats grew hoarse,<br />
And teeth ground into teeth, and both strokes quickened<br />
Lashing the sea, and gasps came, and hearts sickened,<br />
And coxswains damned us, dancing, banking stroke,<br />
To put our weights on, though our hearts were broke,<br />
And both boats seemed to stick and sea seemed glue,<br />
The tide a mill-race we were struggling through;<br />
And every quick recover gave us squints<br />
Of them still there, and oar-tossed water-glints,<br />
And cheering came, our friends, our foemen cheering,<br />
A long, wild, rallying murmur on the hearing,<br />
"Port Fore!" and "Starboard Fore!" "Port Fore!" "Port Fore!"<br />
"Up with her, Starboard," and at that each oar<br />
Lightened, though arms were bursting, and eyes shut,<br />
And the oak stretchers grunted in the strut,<br />
And the curse quickened from the cox, our bows<br />
Crashed, and drove talking water, we made vows,<br />
Chastity vows and temperance; in our pain<br />
We numbered things we’d never eat again<br />
If we could only win; then came the yell<br />
“Starboard,” “Port Fore,” and then a beaten bell<br />
Rung as for fire to cheer us. “Now.” Oars bent,<br />
Soul took the looms now body’s bolt was spent,<br />
“Give way, come on now!” “On now!” “On now!” “Starboard.”<br />
“Port Fore!” “Up with her, Port!”; each cutter harboured<br />
Ten eye-shut painsick strugglers, “Heave, oh heave,”<br />
Catcalls waked echoes like a shrieking sheave.<br />
“Heave,” and I saw a back, then two. “Port Fore,”<br />
“Starboard,” “Come on”; I saw the midship oar,<br />
And knew we had done them. “Port Fore!” “Starboard!” “Now!”<br />
I saw bright water spurting at their bow,<br />
Their cox” full face an instant. They were done.<br />
The watchers” cheering almost drowned the gun.<br />
We had hardly strength to toss our oars; our cry<br />
Cheering the losing cutter was a sigh.<br />
<br />
Other bright days of action have seemed great:<br />
Wild days in a pampero off the Plate;<br />
Good swimming days, at Hog Back or the Coves<br />
Which the young gannet and the corbie loves;<br />
Surf-swimming between rollers, catching breath<br />
Between the advancing grave and breaking death,<br />
Then shooting up into the sunbright smooth<br />
To watch the advancing roller bare her tooth;<br />
And days of labour also, loading, hauling;<br />
Long days at winch or capstan, heaving, pawling;<br />
The days with oxen, dragging stone from blasting,<br />
And dusty days in mills, and hot days masting.<br />
Trucking on dust-dry deckings smooth like ice,<br />
And hunts in mighty wool-racks after mice;<br />
Mornings with buckwheat when the fields did blanch<br />
With White Leghorns come from the chicken ranch;<br />
Days near the spring upon the sunburnt hill,<br />
Plying the maul or gripping tight the drill;<br />
Delights of work most real, delights that change<br />
The headache life of towns to rapture strange<br />
Not known by townsmen, nor imagined; health<br />
That puts new glory upon mental wealth<br />
And makes the poor man rich.<br />
<br />
But that ends, too.<br />
Health, with its thoughts of life; and that bright view,<br />
That sunny landscape from life’s peak, that glory,<br />
And all a glad man’s comments on life’s story,<br />
And thoughts of marvellous towns and living men,<br />
And what pens tell, and all beyond the pen,<br />
End, and are summed in words so truly dead<br />
They raise no image of the heart and head,<br />
The life, the man alive, the friend we knew,<br />
The minds ours argued with or listened to,<br />
None; but are dead, and all life’s keenness, all,<br />
Is dead as print before the funeral;<br />
Even deader after, when the dates are sought,<br />
And cold minds disagree with what we thought.<br />
<br />
This many-pictured world of many passions<br />
Wears out the nations as a woman fashions,<br />
And what life is is much to very few;<br />
Men being so strange, so mad, and what men do<br />
So good to watch or share; but when men count<br />
Those hours of life that were a bursting fount<br />
Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs,<br />
There seems a world, beyond our earthly things,<br />
Gated by golden moments, each bright time<br />
Opening to show the city white like lime,<br />
High-towered and many-peopled. This made sure,<br />
Work that obscures those moments seems impure,<br />
Making our not-returning time of breath<br />
Dull with the ritual and records of death,<br />
That frost of fact by which our wisdom gives<br />
Correctly stated death to all that lives.<br />
<br />
Best trust the happy moments. What they gave<br />
Makes man less fearful of the certain grave,<br />
And gives his work compassion and new eyes.<br />
The days that make us happy make us wise.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-81964349214999330432014-09-28T00:00:00.000-04:002014-09-28T00:00:02.771-04:00Bill (1902) by John MasefieldBill (1902)<br />
by John Masefield<br />
<br />
He lay dead on the cluttered deck and stared at the cold skies,<br />
With never a friend to mourn for him nor a hand to close his eyes:<br />
"Bill, he's dead," was all they said; "he's dead, 'n' there he lies."<br />
<br />
The mate came forrard at seven bells and spat across the rail:<br />
"Just lash him up wi' some holystone in a clout o' rotten sail,<br />
'N', rot ye, get a gait on ye, ye're slower'n a bloody snail!"<br />
<br />
When the rising moon was a copper disc and the sea was a strip of steel,<br />
We dumped him down to the swaying weeds ten fathom beneath the keel.<br />
"It's rough about Bill," the fo'c's'le said, "we'll have to stand his wheel."<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-9600048665322602332014-09-21T00:00:00.000-04:002014-09-21T00:00:03.227-04:00A Song at Parting (from Salt Water Ballads) (1902) by John MasefieldA Song at Parting (from Salt Water Ballads) (1902)<br />by John Masefield<br /><br />The tick of the blood is settling slow, my heart will soon be still.<br />And ripe and ready am I for rest in the grave atop the hill ;<br />So gather me up and lay me down, for ready and ripe am I,<br />For the weary vigil with sightless eyes that may not see the sky.<br /><br /><div>
I have lived my life : I have spilt the wine that God the Maker gave,<br />So carry me up the lonely hill and lay me in the grave,<br />And cover me in with cleanly mould and old and lichened stones.<br />In a place where ever the cry of the wind shall thrill my sleepy bones.<br /><br />Gather me up and lay me down with an old song and a prayer,<br />Cover me in with wholesome earth, and weep and leave me there ;<br />And get you gone with a kindly thought and an old tune and a sigh,<br />And leave me alone, asleep, at rest, for ready and ripe am I.<br /><br /><br /><a class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false" href="https://twitter.com/SailPoet" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Follow @SailPoet</a>
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<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-26228734482545440922014-09-14T00:00:00.000-04:002014-09-14T00:00:01.093-04:00The Ballad of Sir Bors by John MasefieldThe Ballad of Sir Bors<br />
<i>by John Masefield</i><br />
<div>
<br />
WOULD I could win some quiet and rest, and a little ease,<br />
In the cool grey hush of the dusk, in the dim green place of the trees,<br />
Where the birds are singing, singing, singing, crying aloud<br />
The song of the red, red rose that blossoms beyond the seas.<br />
<br />
Would I could see it, the rose, when the light begins to fail,<br />
And a lone white star in the West is glimmering on the mail;<br />
The red, red passionate rose of the sacred blood of the Christ,<br />
In the shining chalice of God, the cup of the Holy Grail.<br />
<br />
The dusk comes gathering grey, and the darkness dims the West,<br />
The oxen low to the byre, and all bells ring to rest;<br />
But I ride over the moors, for the dusk still bides and waits,<br />
That brims my soul with the glow of the rose that ends the Quest.<br />
<br />
My horse is spavined and ribbed, and his bones come through his hide,<br />
My sword is rotten with rust, but I shake the reins and ride,<br />
For the bright white birds of God that nest in the rose have called,<br />
And never a township now is a town where I can bide.<br />
<br />
It will happen at last, at dusk, as my horse limps down the fell,<br />
A star will glow like a note God strikes on a silver bell,<br />
And the bright white birds of God will carry my soul to Christ,<br />
And the sight of the Rose, the Rose, will pay for the years of hell<br />
<br />
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<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-87064546104557432262014-09-07T00:00:00.000-04:002014-09-07T00:00:04.682-04:00Spanish Waters by John Masefield Spanish Waters<br /><i>by John Masefield </i><br /><br />Spanish waters, Spanish waters, you are ringing in my ears,<br />
Like a slow sweet piece of music from the grey forgotten years;<br />
Telling tales, and beating tunes, and bringing weary thoughts to me<br />
Of the sandy beach at Muertos, where I would that I could be.<br />
<br />
There's a surf breaks on Los Muertos, and it never stops to roar,<br />
And it's there we came to anchor, and it's there we went ashore,<br />
Where the blue lagoon is silent amid snags of rotting trees,<br />
Dropping like the clothes of corpses cast up by the seas.<br />
<br />
We anchored at Los Muertos when the dipping sun was red,<br />
We left her half-a-mile to sea, to west of Nigger Head;<br />
And before the mist was on the Cay, before the day was done,<br />
We were all ashore on Muertos with the gold that we had won.<br />
<br />
We bore it through the marshes in a half-score battered chests,<br />
Sinking in the sucking quagmires to the sunburn on our breasts,<br />
Heaving over tree-trunks, gasping, damning at the flies and heat,<br />
Longing for a long drink, out of silver, in the ship’s cool lazareet.<br />
<br />
The moon came white and ghostly as we laid the treasure down,<br />
There was gear there’d make a beggarman as rich as Lima Town,<br />
Copper charms and silver trinkets from the chests of Spanish crews,<br />
Gold doubloons and double moidores, louis d’ors and portagues,<br />
<br />
Clumsy yellow-metal earrings from the Indians of Brazil,<br />
Uncut emeralds out of Rio, bezoar stones from Guayaquil;<br />
Silver, in the crude and fashioned, pots of old Arica Bronze,<br />
Jewels from the bones of Incas desecrated by the Dons.<br />
<br />
We smoothed the place with mattocks, and we took and blazed the tree,<br />
Which marks yon where the gear is hid that none will ever see,<br />
And we laid aboard the ship again, and south away we steers,<br />
Through the loud surf of Los Muertos which is beating in my ears.<br />
<br />
I’m the last alive that knows it. All the rest have gone their ways<br />
Killed, or died, or come to anchor in the old Mulatas Cays,<br />
And I go singing, fiddling, old and starved and in despair,<br />
And I know where all that gold is hid, if I were only there.<br />
<br />
It’s not the way to end it all. I'm old, and nearly blind,<br />
And an old man's past's a strange thing, for it never leaves his mind.<br />
And I see in dreams, awhiles, the beach, the sun’s disc dipping red,<br />
And the tall ship, under topsails, swaying in past Nigger Head.<br />
<br />
I’d be glad to step ashore there, glad to take a pick and go<br />
To the lone blazed coco-palm tree in the place no others know,<br />
And lift the gold and silver that has mouldered there for years<br />
By the loud surf of Los Muertos which is beating in my ears.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-29337001169559469142014-08-31T00:00:00.000-04:002014-08-31T00:00:02.577-04:00Captain Stratton's Fancy by John Masefield Captain Stratton's Fancy<br /><i>by John Masefield </i><br /><br />Oh some are fond of red wine, and some are fond of white,<br />
And some are all for dancing by the pale moonlight:<br />
But rum alone’s the tipple, and the heart’s delight<br />
Of the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.<br />
<br />
Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French,<br />
And some’ll swallow tay and stuff fit only for a wench;<br />
But I’m for right Jamaica till I roll beneath the bench,<br />
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.<br />
<br />
Oh some are for the lily, and some are for the rose,<br />
But I am for the sugar-cane that in Jamaica grows;<br />
For it’s that that makes the bonny drink to warm my copper nose,<br />
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.<br />
<br />
Oh some are fond of fiddles, and a song well sung,<br />
And some are all for music for to lilt upon the tongue;<br />
But mouths were made for tankards, and for sucking at the bung,<br />
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.<br />
<br />
Oh some are fond of dancing, and some are fond of dice,<br />
And some are all for red lips, and pretty lasses’ eyes;<br />
But a right Jamaica puncheon is a finer prize<br />
To the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.<br />
<br />
Oh some that’s good and godly ones they hold that it’s a sin<br />
To troll the jolly bowl around, and let the dollars spin;<br />
But I’m for toleration and for drinking at an inn,<br />
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.<br />
<br />
Oh some are sad and wretched folk that go in silken suits,<br />
And there’s a mort of wicked rogues that live in good reputes;<br />
So I’m for drinking honestly, and dying in my boots,<br />
Like an old bold mate of Henry Morgan.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-3149619896166604562014-08-24T00:00:00.000-04:002014-08-24T00:00:02.271-04:00Cargoes by John Masefield Cargoes<br /><i>by John Masefield </i><br /><br />QUINQUIREME of Nineveh from distant Ophir,<br />
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,<br />
With a cargo of ivory,<br />
And apes and peacocks,<br />
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.<br />
<br />
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,<br />
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,<br />
With a cargo of diamonds,<br />
Emeralds, amethysts,<br />
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.<br />
<br />
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack,<br />
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,<br />
With a cargo of Tyne coal,<br />
Road-rails, pig-lead,<br />
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-42282940123565234742014-08-17T00:00:00.000-04:002014-08-17T00:00:03.613-04:00On Eastnor Knoll by John MasefieldOn Eastnor Knoll<br />
<i>by John Masefield</i><br />
<br />
Silent are the woods, and the dim green boughs are<br />
Hushed in the twilight: yonder, in the path through<br />
The apple orchard, is a tired plough-boy<br />
Calling the cows home.<br />
<br />
A bright white star blinks, the pale moon rounds, but<br />
Still the red, lurid wreckage of the sunset<br />
Smoulders in smoky fire, and burns on<br />
The misty hill-tops.<br />
<br />
Ghostly it grows, and darker, the burning<br />
Fades into smoke, and now the gusty oaks are<br />
A silent army of phantoms thronging<br />
A land of shadows.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-4613411891239342902014-08-10T00:00:00.000-04:002014-08-10T00:00:02.766-04:00Tewkesbury Road by John MasefieldTewkesbury Road<br />
<i>by John Masefield</i><br />
<br />
It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,<br />
Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither or why;<br />
Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool rush of the air,<br />
Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky.<br />
<br />
And to halt at the chattering brook, in a tall green fern at the brink<br />
Where the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the foxgloves purple and white;<br />
Where the shifty-eyed delicate deer troop down to the brook to drink<br />
When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.<br />
<br />
O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,<br />
Is a tune for the blood to jig to, and joy past power of words;<br />
And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirth<br />
At the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cry of the birds.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-33255407728422652842014-08-03T01:00:00.000-04:002014-08-03T01:00:00.692-04:00Mother Carey by John MasefieldMother Carey<br />
<i>by John Masefield</i><br />
<br />
(as told me by the bo'sun)<br />
<br />
Mother Carey? She's the mother o' the witches<br />
'N' all them sort o' rips;<br />
She's a fine gell to look at, but the hitch is,<br />
She's a sight too fond of ships;<br />
She lives upon an iceberg to the norred,<br />
'N' her man he's Davy Jones,<br />
'N' she combs the weeds upon her forred<br />
With pore drowned sailors' bones.<br />
<br />
She's the mother o' the wrecks, 'n' the mother<br />
Of all big winds as blows;<br />
She's up to some deviltry or other<br />
When it storms, or sleets, or snows;<br />
The noise of the wind's her screamin',<br />
'I'm arter a plump, young, fine,<br />
Brass-buttoned, beefy-ribbed young seam'n<br />
So as me 'n' my mate kin dine.'<br />
<br />
She's a hungry old rip 'n' a cruel<br />
For sailor-men like we,<br />
She's give a many mariners the gruel<br />
'N' a long sleep under sea;<br />
She's the blood o' many a crew upon her<br />
'N' the bones of many a wreck,<br />
'N' she's barnacles a-growin' on her<br />
'N' shark's teeth round her neck.<br />
<br />
I ain't never had no schoolin'<br />
Nor read no books like you,<br />
But I knows 't ain't healthy to be foolin'<br />
With that there gristly two;<br />
You're young, you thinks, 'n' you're lairy,<br />
But if you're to make old bones,<br />
Steer clear, I says, o' Mother Carey,<br />
'N' that there Davy Jones.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-49290985971561496022014-07-27T01:00:00.000-04:002014-07-27T01:00:02.205-04:00A Ballad of John Silver (1902) by John MasefieldA Ballad of John Silver (1902)<br />
<i>by John Masefield</i><br />
<br />
We were schooner-rigged and rakish,<br />
With a long and lissome hull,<br />
And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull;<br />
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore,<br />
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore.<br />
<br />
We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship,<br />
We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip;<br />
It's a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored,<br />
But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard.<br />
<br />
Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains,<br />
And the paint-work all was spatter-dashed with other people's brains,<br />
She was boarded, she was looted, she was scuttled till she sank.<br />
And the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank.<br />
<br />
O! then it was (while standing by the taffrail on the poop)<br />
We could hear the drowning folk lament the absent chicken coop;<br />
Then, having washed the blood away, we'd little else to do<br />
Than to dance a quiet hornpipe as the old salts taught us to.<br />
<br />
O! the fiddle on the fo'c'sle, and the slapping naked soles,<br />
And the genial "Down the middle, Jake, and curtsey when she rolls!"<br />
With the silver seas around us and the pale moon overhead,<br />
And the look-out not a-looking and his pipe-bowl glowing red.<br />
<br />
Ah! the pig-tailed, quidding pirates and the pretty pranks we played,<br />
All have since been put a stop to by the naughty Board of Trade;<br />
The schooners and the merry crews are laid away to rest,<br />
A little south the sunset in the islands of the Blest.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-18009775488060072882014-07-20T01:00:00.000-04:002014-07-20T01:00:01.575-04:00Sorrow of Mydath by John MasefieldSorrow of Mydath<br />
<i>by John Masefield</i><br />
<br />
Weary the cry of the wind is, weary the sea,<br />
Weary the heart and the mind and the body of me.<br />
Would I were out of it, done with it, would I could be<br />
A white gull crying along the desolate sands!<br />
<br />
Outcast, derelict soul in a body accurst,<br />
Standing drenched with the spindrift standing athirst,<br />
For the cool green waves of death to arise and burst<br />
In a tide of quiet for me on the desolate sands.<br />
<br />
Would that the waves and the long white hair of the spray<br />
Would gather in splendid terror and blot me away<br />
To the sunless place of the wrecks where the waters sway<br />
Gently, dreamily quietly over desolate sands!<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-23324270025225044412014-07-13T03:00:00.000-04:002014-07-13T03:00:07.041-04:00Hell's Pavement by John MasefieldHell's Pavement<br />
<i>by John Masefield<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></i><br />
<br />
"When I'm discharged at Liverpool 'n' draws my bit o' pay,<br />
I won't come to sea no more;<br />
I'll court a pretty little lass 'n' have a weddin' day,<br />
'N' settle somewhere down shore;<br />
I'll never fare to sea again a-temptin' Davy Jones,<br />
A-hearkening to the cruel sharks a-hungerin' for my bones;<br />
I'll run a blushin' dairy-farm or go a-crackin' stones,<br />
Or buy 'n' keep a little liquor-store."<br />
So he said.<br />
<br />
They towed her in to Liverpool, we made the hooker fast,<br />
And the copper-bound official paid the crew,<br />
And Billy drew his money, but the money didn't last,<br />
For he painted the alongshore blue,<br />
It was rum for Poll, and rum for Nan, and gin for Jolly Jack;<br />
He shipped a week later in the clothes upon his back;<br />
He had to pinch a little straw, he had to beg a sack<br />
To sleep on, when his watch was through,<br />
So he did.<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-73078189199960699752014-07-06T03:00:00.000-04:002014-07-06T03:00:03.824-04:00The Golden City of St. Mary by John MasefieldThe Golden City of St. Mary<br />
<i>by John Masefield</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Out beyond the sunset, could I but find the way,<br />
Is a sleepy blue laguna which widens to a bay,<br />
And there's the Blessed City -- so the sailors say --<br />
The Golden City of St. Mary.<br />
<br />
It's built of fair marble -- white -- without a stain,<br />
And in the cool twilight when the sea-winds wane<br />
The bells chime faintly, like a soft, warm rain,<br />
In the Golden City of St. Mary.<br />
<br />
Among the green palm-trees where the fire-flies shine,<br />
Are the white tavern tables where the gallants dine,<br />
Singing slow Spanish songs like old mulled wine,<br />
In the Golden City of St. Mary.<br />
<br />
Oh I'll be shipping sunset-wards and westward-ho<br />
Through the green toppling combers a-shattering into snow,<br />
Till I come to quiet moorings and a watch below,<br />
<br />
In the Golden City of St. Mary.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1434632833334611.post-54645626042689783542014-06-29T02:00:00.000-04:002014-06-29T02:00:01.829-04:00A Consecration (1902) by John MasefieldA Consecration (1902) by John Masefield<br />
<br />
Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers<br />
Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years,--<br />
Rather the scorned -- the rejected -- the men hemmed in with the spears;<br />
<br />
The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies,<br />
Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,<br />
The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes.<br />
<br />
Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne,<br />
Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown,<br />
But the lads who carried the koppie and cannot be known.<br />
<br />
Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,<br />
The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad,<br />
The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.<br />
<br />
The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout,<br />
The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout,<br />
The drowsy man at the wheel and the tired lookout.<br />
<br />
Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,<br />
The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;--<br />
Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth!<br />
<br />
THEIRs be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;<br />
Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.<br />
Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold --<br />
Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.<br />
AMEN.<br />
<br />
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