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
Speak ever to my heart;
And whether they drag anchor,
Impatient to depart,

Or whether they ply inland,
Or turn them to the sea,
No two of them are calling
In any selfsame key.
For mighty ocean liners

Let forth a slow, deep blast,
While tugs, black-browed and stodgy,
Pipe sharp and shrill and fast,
And battered tropic steamers
Vouchsafe a few hoarse notes:
There's magic in the whistle
Of all the river boats.
And yet although my pulses

Acclaim each separate voice,

The ship above all others

That leads me to rejoice

Is one whose sails to breezes
Are lithely, mutely flung:
The brigantine, the schooner
The ship without a tongue.

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 -
Heigh-ho! for a life on the wave.

Anonymous

THE LEADSMAN'S SONG

For England, when with favoring gale
Our gallant ship up Channel steered,
And scudding under easy sail,

The high blue western lands appeared,

To heave the lead the seaman sprang,
And to the pilot cheerly sang:
"By the deep-Nine."

And bearing up to gain the port,
Some well-known object kept in view,
An abbey tower, a ruined fort,
A beacon to the vessel true;
While oft the lead the seaman flung,
And to the pilot cheerly sung:

"By the mark

Seven."

And as the much-loved shore we near,
With transport we behold the roof
Where dwelt a friend or partner dear,
Of faith and love and matchless proof.
The lead once more the seaman flung,
And to the watchful pilot sung:
Five."

"Quarter less

Now to her berth the ship draws nigh,
With slackened sail she feels the tide,
"Stand clear, the cable," is the cry,
The anchor's gone, we safely ride.
The watch is set and through the night,
We hear the seaman with delight

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!