With the life still strong within her, struggling onward through the blast, Till one last, long wave shall whelm her, and our voyaging is past. Norah M. Holland RIVER BOATS The boats upon the river Or whether they ply inland, Let forth a slow, deep blast, Acclaim each separate voice, The ship above all others That leads me to rejoice Is one whose sails to breezes Anonymous THE TANKERS 133 THE TANKERS To Bombay and Capetown, and ports of a hundred lands, To Mombasa, Panama, and Aden-on-the-sands, Red with rust and green with mold, caked with sodden brine, The reeling, rolling tankers sail southward from the Tyne. Southward past the Cornish cliffs, cleft red against the clouds, They snort and stagger onward with sailors in their shrouds, To the spell of rolling seas and the blue of a windy sky, While the smoke lies brown to leeward as the liners scurry by. Thrashing through a tearing gale with a dark green sea ahead, While the funnel-clews sing madly against a sky of red, Foam-choked and wave-choked, scarred by battered gear, The long, brown decks are whirling seas where silver combers rear. Swinging down a brilliant gulf with shores of brown and gray, The snub-nosed, well-decked tankers slowly steam their way, Up the Straits to the Pirate Coast and dim harbor of the South Where they lie like long red patches by a jungle river's mouth. Gordon Malherbe Hillman HIGH TIDE AT 4 A.M. They've tipped and they've shovelled, they've trimmed and they've stored, And she's down to her load-line as ever; The bridge is swung round and the pilot's aboards And she's off to the dark o' the river. Farewell to the grime and the dust of the tips, It may be a month or for ever: She's watched by the skeleton ghosts on the slips As she ploughs through the dark o' the river. She is one with the Mill and the Mine and the Mart; Black coal is her cargo as ever: You may sneer as you will, but she carries my heart Way down in the dark o' the river. So I pray to the Lord in my bed here ashore A fair-weather passage to give her, For there's shipmates aboard I may never see more Till we've passed through the Dark o' the River! William McFee (1909) THE LEADSMAN'S SONG 135 THE WATER-FRONT There are some outlandish brigs and some queer foreign rigs, And schooners and barkentines trim; Strange craft from Callao and tramps from Bilbao, White yachts and grey men-o'-war grim. And a forest of spars soaring up to the stars, In ships come from over the sea; And a smell in the air seems to tempt you to dare Ship off-far away and be free! Then you question the worth of your countinghouse berth, The blood seems to leap in your veins; And you dream of new places and customs and faces And chafe in despair at your chains. You go back to your stool and you think what a fool Is he who's contented to slave Over profits and losses of hard-fisted bosses - Anonymous THE LEADSMAN'S SONG For England, when with favoring gale The high blue western lands appeared, To heave the lead the seaman sprang, And bearing up to gain the port, "By the mark Seven." And as the much-loved shore we near, "Quarter less Now to her berth the ship draws nigh, Proclaim "All's well." W. Pearce THE LUBBER I've never been a sailor, and I've never been to seaIt's queer how certain things I love, should bring such dreams to me! |