Him I drowned, and his captains 'round him,
A woman buried him where she found him,
Out on the sands with the sea-birds wailing,
A Lord High Admiral home from sailing -
I sank the 'Association.'"

Who sank the "Schiller "?
"I," said Re-tarrier,

"She challenged my barrier.

As big as a church and as tall as a steeple,
Crammed with specie and mails and people,
Into my jaws the night-fogs drove her,

She struck, and crumpled, and then heeled over.
Her boats were swamped as she rolled and crushed

them,

The women shrieked till the black seas hushed

them.

I drowned three hundred as easy as winking,
Which wasn't a bad night's work I'm thinking
I sank the 'Schiller.""

Then the grim rocks that stand guard about Scilly

Buccaboo, Great Smith, and Little Granilly, The Barrel of Butter, Dropnose and Hellweather Started to boast of their conquests together,

Of drowned men and gallant tall vessels laid

low,

While gulls wheeled about them like flurries of

snow,

And green combers romped at them smashing in thunder,

Gurgling and booming in caverns down under,

TAKEN SHIP

103

Sending their diamond drops flying in showers. "Oh!" said the reefs, "What a business is ours! Since saints in coracles paddled from Erin (Fishing our waters for sinners and herrin'), And purple-sailed triremes of Hamilcar came To the Islands of Tin, we've played at the game. We shattered the galleys of conquering Rome, The galleons of Philip, that scudded for home, (The sea-molluscs' slime on their glittering gear), We plundered the plundering French privateer. We caught the great Indiaman head in the wind, And gutted her hold of the treasures of Ind; We broke the proud ships of His Majesty's fleet (The bones of their seamen lie bleached at our feet),

And cloudy tea-clippers that raced from Canton,
Swept into our clutches- and never went on.
Came steel leviathans mocking disaster,

We scrapped them as fast- if anything faster.
So pick up your pilot and take a cross-bearing,
Sound us and chart us from Lion to Tearing,
And ring us with light-houses, day-marks and
buoys,

The gales are our hunters, the fogs our decoys.
We shall not go hungry; we grin, and we wait,
Black-fanged and foam-drabbled, the wolves at the

gate."

TAKEN SHIP

Crosbie Garstin

Tonight, about the little town

The lights will glimmer, golden soft;

But I shall be horizon-down

Facing the stars that climb aloft.

And you, tonight, around the fire,
Will draw the curtains, pitying me;
When I have found my heart's desire-
The wide wind and the swinging sea!
Charles Buxton Going

WINDOWS OVER WATER

Over the harbor, now, the gulls go keeningFlakes of translated foam against the blue; Along the wind a lone white sail is leaning: There will be fog before the fishing's through.

How should I care what boat returns well freighted

Who minds a helm or keeps the tackle clear? What odds to me if early or belated,

Safe sheltered from the Sea's old mischief here?

The dark pines drip; the gulls have ceased their crying;

The surf, like some ironic titan, mocks

Our trivial ways of living and of dying;

Driftwood piles up among the jagged rocks.

Grayness above me, and a gray mist under,
And in my heart a thing I cannot say ...
Why should I lie awake tonight and wonder
How many boats are anchored in the bay?
Leslie Nelson Jennings

I hear a whisper in the heated air "Rest! Rest! give over care!"

Long, level breakers on the golden beach
Murmur in silver speech-

-

"Sleep in the palm-tree shadows on the shore

Work, work no more!

Rest here and work no more."

Where half unburied cities of dead kings

Breed poisonous creeping things

I learn the poor mortality of man

Seek vainly for some plan

Know that great empires pass as I must pass
Like withered blades of grass-

Dead blades of Patna grass.

"Breathe- breathe the odorous sweetness that is ours,"

Cry Frangipani flowers.

"Forget! Forget! and know no more distress,

But languorous idleness:

Dream where dead leaves fall ever from green

trees

To float on sapphire seas

Dream! and be one with these."

A. Hugh Fisher

THE LAST HARBOR

Now the men who shipped aboard of me in other days were these:

Andy Mack of Gloucester, Hernandeau from

Quebec,

And "Freshwater" Kilmanton, and "Salt Sam"

Peck,

And skipper Byce and young Byce who walked the after deck.

But they're gone, and I lie listening to old voices from the seas.

And sun-rotting at a dock is no decent death to

die!

If tides would lift me high enough, and rotten ropes would break,

I'd run a last, high, windy course for old time's

sake;

Old hands upon my tiller and new foam in my wake,

Out where white-rimmed water hills race to meet

the sky.

Lifted on the crest of them, I'd face the yellow

sun,

And racing down their farther slopes, I'd plunge through foaming green,

Sinking slow, unbroken, like a stately-stepping queen,

Down to still, dark waters the sun has never seen, And never ship may find them till her last voyage is done.