THE WILLIAM P. FRYE

She lies across the western main

Beyond the sunset's rim,

Her quays are packed with reeling mists

A city strange and dim;

And silent o'er her harbour bar

The ghostly waters brim.

Norah M. Holland

27

THE "WILLIAM P. FRYE”

I saw her first abreast the Boston Light
At anchor; she had just come in, turned head,
And sent her hawsers creaking, clattering down.
I was so near to where the hawse-pipes fed
The cable out from her careening bow,

I moved up on the swell, shut steam and lay
Hove to in my old launch to look at her.
She'd come in light, a-skimming up the Bay
Like a white ghost with topsails bellying full;
And all her noble lines from bow to stern
Made music in the wind; it seemed she rode
The morning air like those thin clouds that turn
Into tall ships when sunrise lifts the clouds
From calm sea-courses.

There, in smoke-smudged coats,

Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft,
Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats.
Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot
To see the Frye come lording on her way
Like some old queen that we had half forgot
Come to her own. A little up the Bay

The Fort lay green, for it was springtime then;

The wind was fresh, rich with the spicy bloom
Of the New England coast that tardily
Escapes, late April, from an icy tomb.

The State-house glittered on old Beacon Hill,
Gold in the sun... 'Twas all so fair awhile;

But she was fairest this great square-rigged ship
That had blown in from some far happy isle
On from the shores of the Hesperides.

They caught her in a South Atlantic road

Becalmed, and found her hold brimmed up with wheat;

"Wheat's contraband," they said, and blew her

hull

To pieces, murdered one of our staunch fleet,
Fast dwindling, of the big, old sailing ships
That carry trade for us on the high sea
And warped out of each harbor in the States.
It wasn't law, so it seems strange to me
A big mistake. Her keel's struck bottom now
And her four masts sunk fathoms, fathoms deep
To Davy Jones. The dank seaweed will root
On her oozed decks, and the cross-surges sweep
Through the set sails; but never, never more
Her crew will stand away to brace and trim,
Nor sea-blown petrels meet her thrashing up
To windward on the Gulf Stream's stormy rim;
Never again she'll head a no'theast gale
Or like a spirit loom up, sliding dumb,
And ride in safe beyond the Boston Light,
To make the harbor glad because she's come.
Jeanne Robert Foster

In Seventy-Nine her keel was laid,
She did ten years in the coastal trade,
But since those days she's been a rover
Tramping the Seven Seas all over,
Tramping them back and fore and sideways,

But mostly on uncharted tideways

That honest traders had no word of
And gun-boat captains never heard of.
She's wandered where the pack-ice reaches
Seal-poaching on the Bering beaches;
Up sluggish, soupy jungle rivers,

Where lurk proas, devils and the shivers,
Swapping condemned, corroded rifles

For pearls, spice, gold dust and such trifles.
Off flowery, fairy isles she's hovered
Trading (her customers all covered
By Maxims ranged along her gunnel)
Rigged false masts and a dummy funnel,
Flown the White Cross of Island missioners
Then haled her coppery parishioners
Despite their frantic supplications-
To bondage on remote plantations,
With bland and icicle effront'ry

She's flown the flag of every country

And changed her name to match her kidney.

She's been the Wallaroo of Sydney;

The Oscar Ohlsen of Carlskrona;

The Santa Fé of Barcelona;

The Kelpie, Leith; Il Ré, Catania;
The Konig Haakon, Christiania —
To give a typical selection.

With paint she's altered her complexion
And practised manifold disguises
Pursuing shady enterprises

All up and down the world's dim edges.
Whilst noble ships have split on ledges
Or drowned on nights of flame and thunder
And eager clippers sailed clean under
Still she slinks on, battered and rusty,
Her engines lame, her bottom crusty,
Her deckhouse starred with bullet splashes,
Her fo-cs'le scarred with shrapnel gashes,
Loud with her engines' crazy clamor
Into the splendid sunset glamour;
Leaky and foul, accursed and haunted
She staggers onward, nothing daunted,
The oily flame-gilt waters churning,
Her rusty hide all glowing, burning
With her every stay a gleaming wire
And her every porthole flashing fire;
Sun-blazoned into the west goes she,
A golden ship on a golden sea.

Crosbie Garstin

THE LAST PORT

(Old Marblehead Cemetery)

Here sleep the silent captains by their sea.
The shrill Northeaster warns them not; their eyes
No longer scan the ghostly fogs that rise
In silent, swirling menace on their lee.
The Polar Star they can no longer see;
The ancient, salt-encrusted town that lies

Below their hill, means naught to them, grown wise

A SAILORMAN'S A FREE MAN

In the vast offing of Eternity.

No watch they set; the sparrow builds her
nest

Unheeded; nothing stirs within their breast
At call of water fowl or drone of bee;
And here are other graves amid the rest,
Each with a headstone for the absent guest
Graved with its terse inscription:

Lost at Sea.

John D. Swain

31

"A SAILORMAN'S A FREE MAN"

Before I was a sailor, my life was spent on land; I lived in crowded cities, and I wore their scarlet

brand;

But when I shipped it eastwardly, a change came

over me.

I found that there was nothing like the wide, blue

sea.

Refrain

So let the waves go rolling,
And let the winds go blow.

A sailorman's a free man
As only sailors know.

The town is neat and handy

For girls and gaietee,

But Life is worth the living
On the wide, blue sea!

I sailed the old Atlantic a dozen times or so;

I swung Cape Horn and coasted it as far as

Callao;