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; She rights! she rights, boys! we're off shore. GEORGE ALEXANDER STEVENS. YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. YE mariners of England! Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, Your glorious standard launch again And sweep through the deep, The spirits of your fathers For the deck it was their field of fame, And ocean was their grave: Britannia needs no bulwarks, With thunders from her native oak, The meteor flag of England Till danger's troubled night depart, When the storm has ceased to blow; THOMAS CAMPBELL. TOM BOWLING. HERE, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling, No more he 'll hear the tempest howling, Tom never from his word departed, His friends were many and true-hearted, But mirth is turned to melancholy, Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather, Shall give, to call life's crew together, For though his body 's under hatches, CHARLES DIBDIN. THE WHITE SQUALL. THE sea was bright, and the bark rode well; They neared the land where in beauty smiles ALL ye who have gained the haven of safe days, Be well content, I say, and hear men's praise: Bland waters shining in an equal sun,- Remember near what rocks, and through what shoals, PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. 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! 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 And reaching those on mountain heights above, CHARLES TURNER. FRAGMENTS. THE SEA-SHORE. I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times, 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, Samson Agonistes. Hearts of oak are our ships, Hearts of oak are our men. Hearts of Oak. MILTON D. GARRICK. |