| |
1894 | | “And reports the derelict ‘Mary Pollock’ still at sea” |
| SHIPPING NEWS. |
I WAS the staunchest of our fleet | |
| Till the sea rose beneath my feet | |
| Unheralded, in hatred past all measure. | |
| Into his pits he stamped my crew, | |
| Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw, | 5 |
| Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure. | |
| |
| Man made me, and my will | |
| Is to my maker still, | |
| Whom now the currents con, the rollers steer— | |
| Lifting forlorn to spy | 10 |
| Trailed smoke along the sky, | |
| Falling afraid lest any keel come near! | |
| |
| Wrenched as the lips of thirst, | |
| Wried, dried, and split and burst, | |
| Bone-bleached my decks, wind-scoured to the graining; | 15 |
| And, jarred at every roll, | |
| The gear that was my soul | |
| Answers the anguish of my beams’ complaining. | |
| |
| For life that crammed me full, | |
| Gangs of the prying gull | 20 |
| That shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches. | |
| For roar that dumbed the gale, | |
| My hawse-pipes’ guttering wail, | |
| Sobbing my heart out through the uncounted watches. | |
| |
| Blind in the hot blue ring | 25 |
| Through all my points I swing— | |
| Swing and return to shift the sun anew. | |
| Blind in my well-known sky | |
| I hear the stars go by, | |
| Mocking the prow that cannot hold one true. | 30 |
| |
| White on my wasted path | |
| Wave after wave in wrath | |
| Frets ’gainst his fellow, warring where to send me. | |
| Flung forward, heaved aside, | |
| Witless and dazed I bide | 35 |
| The mercy of the comber that shall end me. | |
| |
| North where the bergs careen, | |
| The spray of seas unseen | |
| Smokes round my head and freezes in the falling. | |
| South where the corals breed, | 40 |
| The footless, floating weed | |
| Folds me and fouls me, strake on strake upcrawling. | |
| |
| I that was clean to run | |
| My race against the sun— | |
| Strength on the deep—am bawd to all disaster; | 45 |
| Whipped forth by night to meet | |
| My sister’s careless feet, | |
| And with a kiss betray her to my master. | |
| |
| Man made me, and my will | |
| Is to my maker still— | 50 |
| To him and his, our peoples at their pier: | |
| Lifting in hope to spy | |
| Trailed smoke along the sky, | |
| Falling afraid lest any keel come near! | |
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