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| COME, see the Dolphin’s anchor forged; ’t is at a white heat now: | |
| 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; | 5 |
| Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there. | |
| |
| The windlass strains the tackle-chains, the black mound heaves below, | |
| 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! | 10 |
| 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. | 15 |
| “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; | 20 |
| And thick and loud the swinking crowd, at every stroke, pant “Ho!” | |
| |
| Leap out, leap out, my masters; leap out and lay on load! | |
| 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,— | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| Then moves his head, as though he said, “Fear nothing,—here am I!” | |
| |
| Swing in your strokes in order, let foot and hand keep time; | |
| 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! | 35 |
| 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, | 40 |
| 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. | |
| |
| In livid and obdùrate gloom, he darkens down at last: | |
| A shapely one he is, and strong as e’er from cat was cast. | 45 |
| 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, | 50 |
| 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; | 55 |
| 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, | 60 |
| 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. | |
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| O broad-armed fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal thine? | |
| The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons that tugs thy cable line; | 65 |
| 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. | |
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| O lodger in the sea-king’s halls, couldst thou but understand | 70 |
| 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! | 75 |
| |
| Give honor to their memories who left the pleasant strand | |
| 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, | 80 |
| Honor him for their memory whose bones he goes among! | |
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