Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Descriptive Poems: III. PlacesThe Forging of the Anchor
Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886)C
The bellows ceased, the flames decreased; though on the forge’s brow
The little flames still fitfully play through the sable mound:
And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round,
All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare;
Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there.
And red and deep a hundred veins burst out at every throe;
It rises, roars, rends all outright,—O Vulcan, what a glow!
’T is blinding white, ’t is blasting bright, the high sun shines not so!
The high sun sees not, on the earth, such a fiery, fearful show,—
The roof-ribs swarth, the candent hearth, the ruddy, lurid row
Of smiths that stand, an ardent band, like men before the foe.
As, quivering through his fleece of flame, the sailing monster slow
Sinks on the anvil,—all about the faces fiery grow.
“Hurrah!” they shout, “leap out, leap out;” bang, bang, the sledges go;
Hurrah! the jetted lightnings are hissing high and low;
A hailing fount of fire is struck at every squashing blow;
The leathern mail rebounds the hail; the rattling cinders strew
The ground around; at every bound the sweltering fountains flow;
And thick and loud the swinking crowd, at every stroke, pant “Ho!”
Let ’s forge a goodly anchor, a bower, thick and broad;
For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode,
And I see the good ship riding, all in a perillous road,—
The low reef roaring on her lee, the roll of ocean poured
From stem to stern, sea after sea; the mainmast by the board;
The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the chains,—
But courage still, brave mariners, the bower still remains,
And not an inch to flinch he deigns save when ye pitch sky-high,
Then moves his head, as though he said, “Fear nothing,—here am I!”
Your blows make music sweeter far than any steeple’s chime,
But while you sling your sledges, sing; and let the burden be,
The Anchor is the Anvil King, and royal craftsmen we!
Strike in, strike in, the sparks begin to dull their rustling red!
Our hammers ring with sharper din, our work will soon be sped;
Our anchor soon must change his bed of fiery rich array
For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay;
Our anchor soon must change the lay of merry craftsmen here,
For the Yeo-heave-o, and the Heave-away, and the sighing seaman’s cheer;
When, weighing slow, at eve they go—far, far from love and home,
And sobbing sweethearts, in a row, wail o’er the ocean foam.
A shapely one he is, and strong as e’er from cat was cast.
O trusted and trustworthy guard, if thou hadst life like me,
What pleasures would thy toils reward beneath the deep green sea!
O deep-sea diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?
The hoary monsters’ palaces! methinks what joy ’t were now
To go plumb plunging down amid th’ assembly of the whales,
And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails!
Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea unicorn,
And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn;
To leave the subtle sworder-fish of bony blade forlorn;
And for the ghastly-grinning shark, to laugh his jaws to scorn;
To leap down on the kraken’s back, where mid Norwegian isles
He lies, a lubber anchorage for sudden shallowed miles,
Till snorting, like an under-sea volcano, off he rolls;
Meanwhile to swing, a-buffeting the far-astonished shoals
Of his back-browsing ocean calves; or, haply in a cove,
Shell-strewn, and consecrate of old to some Undinè’s love,
To find the long-haired mermaidens; or, hard by icy lands,
To wrestle with the sea-serpent upon cerulean sands.
The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons that tugs thy cable line;
And night by night ’t is thy delight, thy glory day by day,
Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play;
But, shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave,—
A fisher’s joy is to destroy, thine office is to save.
Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who that dripping band,
Slow swaying in the heaving waves that round about thee bend,
With sounds like breakers in a dream, blessing their ancient friend:
O, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round thee,
Thine iron side would swell with pride; thou ’dst leap within the sea!
To shed their blood so freely for the love of fatherland,—
Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy churchyard grave
So freely for a restless bed amid the tossing wave;
O, though our anchor may not be all I have fondly sung,
Honor him for their memory whose bones he goes among!