Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
King Solomon drew merchantmen,
Because of his desire
For peacocks, apes, and ivory,
From Tarshish unto Tyre,
With cedars out of Lebanon
Which Hiram rafted down;
But we be only sailormen
That use in London town.
Coastwise -- cross-seas -- round the world and back again --
Where the paw shall head us or the full Trade suits --
Plain-sail -- storm-sail -- lay your board and tack again --
And that's the way we'll pay Paddy Doyle for his boots!
We bring no store of ingots,
Of spice or precious stones,
But what we have we gathered
With sweat and aching bones:
In flame beneath the Tropics,
In frost upon the floe,
And jeopardy of every wind
That does between them go.
And some we got by purchase,
And some we had by trade,
And some we found by courtesy
Of pike and carronade --
At midnight, 'mid-sea meetings,
For charity to keep,
And light the rolling homeward-bound
That rowed a foot too deep!
By sport of bitter weather
We're walty, strained, and scarred
From the kentledge on the kelson
To the slings upon the yard.
Six oceans had their will of us
To carry all away --
Our galley's in the Baltic,
And our boom's in Mossel Bay.
We've floundered off the Texel,
Awash with sodden deals,
We've shipped from Valparaiso
With the Norther at our heels:
We're ratched beyond the Crossets
That tusk the Southern Pole,
And dipped our gunnels under
To the dread Agulhas roll.
Beyond all outer charting
We sailed where none have sailed,
And saw the land-lights burning
On islands none have hailed;
Our hair stood up for wonder,
But, when the night was done,
There danced the deep to windward
Blue-empty'neath the sun!
Strange consorts rode beside us
And brought us evil luck;
The witch-fire climbed our channels,
And flared on vane and truck,
Till, through the red tornado,
That lashed us nigh to blind,
We saw The Dutchman plunging,
Full canvas, head to wind!
We've heard the Midnight Leadsman
That calls the black deep down --
Ay, thrice we've heard The Swimmer,
The Thing that may not drown.
On frozen bunt and gasket
The sleet-cloud drave her hosts,
When, manned by more than signed with us
We passed the Isle of Ghosts!
And north, amid the hummocks,
A biscuit-toss below,
We met the silent shallop
That frighted whalers know;
For, down a cruel ice-lane,
That opened as he sped,
We saw dead Hendrick Hudson
Steer, North by West, his dead.
So dealt God's waters with us
Beneath the roaring skies,
So walked His signs and marrvels
All naked to our eyes:
But we were heading homeward
With trade to lose or make --
Good Lord, they slipped behind us
In the tailing of our wake!
Let go, let go the anchors;
Now shamed at heart are we
To bring so poor a cargo home
That had for gift the sea!
Let go the great bow-anchor --
Ah, fools were we and blind --
The worst we stored with utter toil,
The best we left behind!
Coastwise -- cross-seas -- round the world and back again,
Whither flaw shall fail us or the Trades drive down:
Plain-sail -- storm-sail -- lay your board and tack again --
And all to bring a cargo up to London Town!
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!
Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when the siren hoots and roars --
By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail --
As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail.
We bridge across the dark and bid the helmsman have a care,
The flash that wheeling
That use in London Town.
Coastwise -- cross-seas -- round the world and back again --
Where the flaw shall head us or the full Trade suits --
Plain-sail -- storm-sail -- lay your board and tack again --
And that's the way we'll pay Paddy Doyle for his boots!
We bring no store of ingots,
Of spice or precious stones,
But that we have we gathered
With sweat and aching bones:
In flame beneath the tropics,
In frost upon the floe,
And jeopardy of every wind
That does between them go.
And some we got by purchase,
And some we had by trade,
And some we found by courtesy
Of pike and carronade --
At midnight, 'mid-sea meetings,
For charity to keep,
And light the rolling homeward-bound
That rode a foot too deep.
By sport of bitter weather
We're walty, strained, and scarred
From the kentledge on the kelson
To the slings upon the yard.
Six oceans had their will of us
To carry all away --
Our galley's in the Baltic,
And our boom's in Mossel Bay!
We've floundered off the Texel,
Awash with sodden deals,
We've slipped from Valparaiso
With the Norther at our heels:
We've ratched beyond the Crossets
That tusk the Southern Pole,
And dipped our gunnels under
To the dread Agulhas roll.
Beyond all outer charting
We sailed where none have sailed,
And saw the land-lights burning
On islands none have hailed;
Our hair stood up for wonder,
But, when the night was done,
There danced the deep to windward
Blue-empty 'neath the sun!
Strange consorts rode beside us
And brought us evil luck;
The witch-fire climbed our channels,
And flared on vane and truck:
Till, through the red tornado,
That lashed us nigh to blind,
We saw The Dutchman plunging,
Full canvas, head to wind!
We've heard the Midnight Leadsman
That calls the black deep down --
Ay, thrice we've heard The Swimmer,
The Thing that may not drown.
On frozen bunt and gasket
The sleet-cloud drave her hosts,
When, manned by more than signed with us,
We passed the Isle o' Ghosts!
And north, amid the hummocks,
A biscuit-toss below,
We met the silent shallop
That frighted whalers know;
For, down a cruel ice-lane,
That opened as he sped,
We saw dead Henry Hudson
Steer, North by West, his dead.
So dealt God's waters with us
Beneath the roaring skies,
So walked His signs and marvels
All naked to our eyes:
But we were heading homeward
With trade to lose or make --
Good Lord, they slipped behind us
In the tailing of our wake!
Let go, let go the anchors;
Now shamed at heart are we
To bring so poor a cargo home
That had for gift the sea!
Let go the great bow-anchors --
Ah, fools were we and blind --
The worst we stored with utter toil,
The best we left behind!
Coastwise -- cross-seas -- round the world and back again,
Whither flaw shall fail us or the Trades drive down:
Plain-sail -- storm-sail -- lay your board and tack again --
And all to bring a cargo up to London Town!
|
Written by
Eugene Field |
Prate, ye who will, of so-called charms you find across the sea--
The land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me!
I've done the grand for fourteen months in every foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired--as I can see--
Is that which teaches that this land's the land of lands for me.
Now, I am of opinion that a person should get some
Warmth in this present life of ours, not all in that to come;
So when Boreas blows his blast, through country and through town,
Or when upon the muddy streets the stifling fog rolls down,
Go, guzzle in a pub, or plod some bleak malarious grove,
But let me toast my shrunken shanks beside some Yankee stove.
The British people say they "don't believe in stoves, y' know;"
Perchance because we warmed 'em so completely years ago!
They talk of "drahfts" and "stuffiness" and "ill effects of heat,"
As they chatter in their barny rooms or shiver 'round the street;
With sunshine such a rarity, and stoves esteemed a sin,
What wonder they are wedded to their fads--catarrh and gin?
In Germany are stoves galore, and yet you seldom find
A fire within the stoves, for German stoves are not that kind;
The Germans say that fires make dirt, and dirt's an odious thing,
But the truth is that the pfennig is the average Teuton's king,
And since the fire costs pfennigs, why, the thrifty soul denies
Himself all heat except what comes with beer and exercise.
The Frenchman builds a fire of cones, the Irishman of peat;
The frugal Dutchman buys a fire when he has need of heat--
That is to say, he pays so much each day to one who brings
The necessary living coals to warm his soup and things;
In Italy and Spain they have no need to heat the house--
'Neath balmy skies the native picks the mandolin and louse.
Now, we've no mouldy catacombs, no feudal castles grim,
No ruined monasteries, no abbeys ghostly dim;
Our ancient history is new, our future's all ahead,
And we've got a tariff bill that's made all Europe sick abed--
But what is best, though short on tombs and academic groves,
We double discount Christendom on sunshine and on stoves.
Dear land of mine! I come to you from months of chill and storm,
Blessing the honest people whose hearts and hearths are warm;
A fairer, sweeter song than this I mean to weave to you
When I've reached my lakeside 'dobe and once get heated through;
But, even then, the burthen of that fairer song shall be
That the land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me.
|
Written by
Rudyard Kipling |
Me that 'ave been what I've been --
Me that 'ave gone where I've gone --
Me that 'ave seen what I've seen --
'Ow can I ever take on
With awful old England again,
An' 'ouses both sides of the street,
And 'edges two sides of the lane,
And the parson an' gentry between,
An' touchin' my 'at when we meet --
Me that 'ave been what I've been?
Me that 'ave watched 'arf a world
'Eave up all shiny with dew,
Kopje on kop to the sun,
An' as soon as the mist let 'em through
Our 'elios winkin' like fun --
Three sides of a ninety-mile square,
Over valleys as big as a shire --
"Are ye there? Are ye there? Are ye there?"
An' then the blind drum of our fire . . .
An' I'm rollin' 'is lawns for the Squire,
Me!
Me htat 'ave rode through the dark
Forty mile, often, on end,
Along the Ma'ollisberg Range,
With only the stars for my mark
An' only the night for my friend,
An' things runnin' off as you pass,
An' things jumpin' up in the grass,
An' the silence, the shine an' the size
Of the 'igh, unexpressible skies --
I am takin' some letters almost
As much as a mile to the post,
An' "mind you come back with the change!"
Me!
Me that saw Barberton took
When we dropped through the clouds on their 'ead,
An' they 'ove the guns over and fled --
Me that was through Di'mond I'll,
An' Pieters an' Springs an' Belfast --
From Dundee to Vereeniging all --
Me that stuck out to the last
(An' five bloomin' bars on my chest) --
I am doin' my Sunday-school best,
By the 'elp of the Squire an' 'is wife
(Not to mention the 'ousemaid an' cook),
To come in an' 'ands up an' be still,
An' honestly work for my bread,
My livin' in that state of life
To which it shall please God to call
Me!
Me that 'ave followed my trade
In the place where the Lightnin's are made;
"Twixt the Rains and the Sun and the Moon --
Me that lay down an' got up
Three years with the sky for my roof --
That 'ave ridden my 'unger an' thirst
Six thousand raw mile on the hoof,
With the Vaal and the Orange for cup,
An' the Brandwater Basin for dish, --
Oh! it's 'ard to be'ave as they wish
(Too 'ard, an' a little too soon),
I'll 'ave to think over it first --
Me!
I will arise an' get 'ence --
I will trek South and make sure
If it's only my fancy or not
That the sunshine of England is pale,
And the breezes of England are stale,
An' there's something' gone small with the lot.
For I know of a sun an' a wind,
An' some plains and a mountain be'ind,
An' some graves by a barb-wire fence,
An' a Dutchman I've fought 'oo might give
Me a job where I ever inclined
To look in an' offsaddle an' live
Where there's neither a road nor a tree --
But only my Maker an' me,
An I think it will kill me or cure,
So I think I will go there an' see.
|
Written by
William Butler Yeats |
Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,
Old Dublin merchant "free of the ten and four"
Or trading out of Galway into Spain;
Old country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,
A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;
Merchant and scholar who have left me blood
That has not passed through any huckster's loin,
Soldiers that gave, whatever die was cast:
A Butler or an Armstrong that withstood
Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne
James and his Irish when the Dutchman crossed;
Old merchant skipper that leaped overboard
After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay;
You most of all, silent and fierce old man,
Because the daily spectacle that stirred
My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say,
"Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun";
Pardon that for a barren passion's sake,
Although I have come close on forty-nine,
I have no child, I have nothing but a book,
Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine.
|
Written by
Edwin Arlington Robinson |
Unyielding in the pride of his defiance,
Afloat with none to serve or to command,
Lord of himself at last, and all by Science,
He seeks the Vanished Land.
Alone, by the one light of his one thought,
He steers to find the shore from which he came,
Fearless of in what coil he may be caught
On seas that have no name.
Into the night he sails, and after night
There is a dawning, thought there be no sun;
Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight,
Unsighted, he sails on.
At last there is a lifting of the cloud
Between the flood before him and the sky;
And then--though he may curse the Power aloud
That has no power to die--
He steers himself away from what is haunted
By the old ghost of what has been before,--
Abandoning, as always, and undaunted,
One fog-walled island more.
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