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1899
AS our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine, | |
| Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line; | |
| So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire, | |
| Accost and decoy to our masters’ desire. | |
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| Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure, | 5 |
| Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure; | |
| Since half of our trade is that same pretty sort | |
| As mettlesome wenches do practise in port. | |
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| For this is our office: to spy and make room, | |
| As hiding yet guiding the foe to their doom. | 10 |
| Surrounding, confounding, we bait and betray | |
| And tempt them to battle the seas’ width away. | |
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| The pot-bellied merchant foreboding no wrong | |
| With headlight and sidelight he lieth along, | |
| Till, lightless and lightfoot and lurking, leap we | 15 |
| To force him discover his business by sea. | |
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| And when we have wakened the lust of a foe, | |
| To draw him by flight toward our bullies we go, | |
| Till, ’ware of strange smoke stealing nearer, he flies | |
| Or our bullies close in for to make him good prize. | 20 |
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| So, when we have spied on the path of their host, | |
| One flieth to carry that word to the coast; | |
| And, lest by false doublings they turn and go free, | |
| One lieth behind them to follow and see. | |
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| Anon we return, being gathered again, | 25 |
| Across the sad valleys all drabbled with rain— | |
| Across the grey ridges all crispèd and curled— | |
| To join the long dance round the curve of the world. | |
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| The bitter salt spindrift, the sun-glare likewise, | |
| The moon-track a-tremble, bewilders our eyes, | 30 |
| Where, linking and lifting, our sisters we hail | |
| ’Twixt wrench of cross-surges or plunge of head-gale. | |
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| As maidens awaiting the bride to come forth | |
| Make play with light jestings and wit of no worth, | |
| So, widdershins circling the bride-bed of death, | 35 |
| Each fleereth her neighbour and signeth and saith:— | |
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| “What see ye? Their signals, or levin afar? | |
| “What hear ye? God’s thunder, or guns of our war? | |
| “What mark ye? Their smoke, or the cloud-rack outblown? | |
| “What chase ye? Their lights, or the Daystar low down?” | 40 |
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| So, times past all number deceived by false shows, | |
| Deceiving we cumber the road of our foes, | |
| For this is our virtue: to track and betray; | |
| Preparing great battles a sea’s width away. | |
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| Now peace is at end and our peoples take heart, | 45 |
| For the laws are clean gone that restrained our art; | |
| Up and down the near headlands and against the far wind | |
| We are loosed (O be swift!) to the work of our kind! | |
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