Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

While o'er the ship wild waves are beating,

We our wives and children mourn; Alas! from hence there's no retreating, Alas! to them there's no return!

Still the leak is gaining on us!

Both chain-pumps are choked below: Heaven have mercy here upon us! For only that can save us now.

O'er the lee-beam is the land, boys, Let the guns o'erboard be thrown; To the pumps call every hand, boys, See our mizzen-mast is gone.

The leak we've found, it cannot pour fast;
We've lightened her a foot or more;
Up and rig a jury foremast,

She rights! she rights, boys! we're off shore.

GEORGE ALEXANDER STEVENS.

YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND.

YE mariners of England!
That guard our native seas;

Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!

Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe!

And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave! —

For the deck it was their field of fame,

And ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep.

With thunders from her native oak,
She quells the floods below,
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy winds do blow ;
When the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn;

Till danger's troubled night depart,
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,

When the storm has ceased to blow;
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

TOM BOWLING.

HERE, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of our crew;

No more he 'll hear the tempest howling,
For death has broached him to.
His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful, below, he did his duty;
But now he's gone aloft.

Tom never from his word departed,
His virtues were so rare,

His friends were many and true-hearted,
His Poll was kind and fair:
And then he'd sing, so blithe and jolly,
Ah, many 's the time and oft!

But mirth is turned to melancholy,
For Tom is gone aloft.

Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,
When He who all commands

Shall give, to call life's crew together,
The word to "pipe all hands."
Thus Death, who kings and tars despatches,
In vain Tom's life has doffed;

For though his body 's under hatches,
His soul has gone aloft.

CHARLES DIBDIN.

THE WHITE SQUALL.

THE sea was bright, and the bark rode well;
The breeze bore the tone of the vesper bell;
'T was a gallant bark with a crew as brave
As ever launched on the heaving wave.
She shone in the light of declining day,
And each sail was set, and each heart was gay.

They neared the land where in beauty smiles
The sunny shore of the Grecian Isles;
All thought of home, of that welcome dear
Which soon should greet each wanderer's ear;
And in fancy joined the social throng
In the festive dance and the joyous song.

[blocks in formation]
[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

ALL ye who have gained the haven of safe days,
And rest at ease, your wanderings being done,
Except the last, inevitable one,

Be well content, I say, and hear men's praise:
Yet in the quiet of your sheltered bays,-

Bland waters shining in an equal sun,-
Forget not that the awful storm-tides run
In far, unsheltered, and tempestuous ways:

Remember near what rocks, and through what shoals,
Worn, desperate mariners strain with all their might:
They may not come to your sweet restful goals,
Your waters placid in the level light: -
Their graves wait in that sea no moon controls,
That is in dreadful fellowship with Night.

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

[graphic][subsumed]

Our brows are wreathed 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 syren hoots and roars—

The lover from the sea-rim drawnhis love in English lanes.

We greet the clippers wing-andwing that race the Southern wool;

We warn the crawling cargo-tanks of Bremen, Leith and Hull; To each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea

The white wall-sided warships or the whalers of Dundee !

Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guard-ports of the Morn! Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn!

Swift shuttles of an Empire's loom that weave us main to main,

The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back again!

By day the dipping house-flag and by Go, get you gone up-Channel with the

night the rocket's trail

As the sheep that graze behind us so we

know them where they hail.

sea-crust on your plates;

Go, get you into London with the bur

den of your freights!

We bridge across the dark, and bid the Haste, for they talk of Empire there,

helmsman nave a care,

The flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer; From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chains

and say, if any seek,

The Lights of England sent you, and by silence shall ye speak.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

Copyright, in 1896, by Rudyard Kipling.

THE OCEAN.

THE Ocean at the bidding of the moon
Forever changes with his restless tide :
Flung shoreward now, to be regathered soon
With kingly pauses of reluctant pride,
And semblance of return. Anon from home
He issues forth anew, high ridged and free,
The gentlest murmur of his seething foam
Like armies whispering where great echoes be.
O, leave me here upon this beach to rove,
Mute listener to that sound so grand and lone !
A glorious sound, deep drawn, and strongly
thrown,

And reaching those on mountain heights above,
To British ears (as who shall scorn to own?)
A tutelar fond voice, a savior tone of love.

CHARLES TURNER.

FRAGMENTS.

THE SEA-SHORE.

I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself

Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power;
And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

Behold the threaden sails,

Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the nuge bottoms through the furrowed sea, Breasting the lofty surge.

King Henry V., Act iii. Chorus.

Sailing

Like a stately ship

Of Tarsus, bound for the isles Of Javan or Gadire,

SHAKESPEARE

With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
Sails filled, and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds that hold them play,
An amber scent of odorous perfume
Her harbinger.

Samson Agonistes.

Hearts of oak are our ships, Hearts of oak are our men.

Hearts of Oak.

MILTON

D. GARRICK.

« VorigeDoorgaan »