O, FALMOUTH IS A FINE TOWN

Barrios and Santos,

Sydney, Loango,
Nagasaki, Saigon,

Colon and Callao

Their names are siren music

To make you want to go.

Oh, they'll never let a man be good,
They whisper in his ear,

Until the fever heats his blood
To see the big ships clear.
They call ever to the rover,
They sing of steam and sail:
"Come out and look us over;
Get up and hit the trail!"

Constant and Aleck,

Smyrna, Tripoli,

Sandakan, Shanghai,

Cadiz-by-the-sea

Oh, the finest hymn-book printed

Is an old geography!

127

Leo Hays

O, FALMOUTH IS A FINE TOWN

O, Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay,
And I wish from my heart it's there I was to-day;
I wish from my heart I was far away from here,
Sitting in my parlor and talking to my dear.
For it's home, dearie, home-it's home I want to
be.

Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea.

O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken

tree,

They're all growing green in the old countrie.

In Baltimore a-walking a lady I did meet

With her babe on her arm as she came down the

street;

And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle standing

ready

For the pretty little babe that has never seen its daddie.

And it's home, dearie, home,

O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring;
And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king;
With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket

blue

He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do.

And it's home, dearie, home,

O, there's a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west,

And that of all the winds is the one I like the best, For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon

free,

And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie. For it's home, dearie, home- it's home I want to

be.

Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea.
O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree,
They're all growing green in the old countrie.

William E. Henley

MERCHANDISE

129

MERCHANDISE

Merchandise! Merchandise! Tortoise-shell,

spices,

Carpets and indigo- sent o'er the high seas;
Mother-o'-pearl from the Solomon Isles
Brought by a brigantine ten thousand miles.
Rubber from Zanzibar, tea from Nang-Po,
Copra from Hayti, and wine from Bordeaux;
Ships, with top-gallants and royals unfurled,
Are bringing in freights from the ends of the
world.

Crazy old wind-jammers, manned by Malays,
With rat-ridden bulkheads and creaking old stays,
Reeking of bilge and of paint and of pitch-
That's how your fat city merchant grew rich.
But with "tramps," heavy laden, and liners untold
You may lease a new life to a world that's grown
old.

Merchandise! Merchandise! Nations are made By their men and their ships and their overseas trade.

So widen your harbors, your docks and your quays,
And hazard your wares on the wide ocean ways,
Run out your railways and hew out your coal,
For only by trade can a country keep whole.
Feed up your furnaces, fashion your steel,
Stick to your bargains and pay on the deal;
Rich is your birthright, and well you'll be paid
If you keep in good faith with your overseas

trade.

Learn up geography

work out your sums,

Build up your commerce, and pull down your slums;
Sail on a Plimsoll that marks a full hold
Your overseas trade means a harvest of gold.
Bring in the palm-oil and pepper you've bought,
But send out ten times the amount you import;
Trade your inventions, your labor and sweat-
Your overseas traffic will keep ye from debt.

Hark to the song of the shuttle and loom,
"Keep up your commerce or crawl to your tomb!"
Study new methods and open new lines,
Quicken your factories, foundries and mines.
Think of Columbus, De Gama and Howe,
And waste not their labors by "slacking it" now;
Work is life's currency - earn what you're worth,
And send out your ships to the ends of the earth.

For deep-bosomed mothers with wide-fashioned hips

Will bear ye good sons for the building of ships; Good sons for your ships and good ships for your

trade

That's how the peace of the world will be made! So, send out your strong to the forests untrod, Work for yourselves and your neighbors and God; Keep these great nations the homes of the free, With merchandise, men and good ships on the sea. Merchandise! Merchandise! Good, honest mer

chandise!

Merchandise, men and good ships on the sea. Anonymous

THE LAST VOYAGE

131

THE LAST VOYAGE

When I loose my vessel's moorings, and put out to

sea once more

On the last and longest voyage that shall never reach the shore,

O Thou Master of the Ocean, send no tranquil tides

to me,

But 'mid all Thy floods and thunders let my vessel put to sea.

Let her lie within no tropic sea, dead rotten to the

bone,

Till the lisping, sluggish waters claim my vessel for their own;

Till the sun shall scar her timbers, and the slimy weed shall crawl

O'er her planks that gape and widen, and the slow sea swallow all.

Let her not go down in darkness, where the smoking mist-wreaths hide

The white signal of the breakers, dimly guessed at, overside;

While her decks are in confusion, and the wreck drops momently,

And she drifts in dark and panic to the death she cannot see.

But out in the open ocean, where the great waves call and cry,

Leap and thunder at her taffrail, while the scud blows stinging by,