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1890
NOW the new year reviving old desires, | |
| The restless soul to open sea aspires, | |
| Where the Blue Peter flickers from the fore, | |
| And the grimed stoker feeds the engine-fires. | |
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| Coupons, alas, depart with all their rows, | 5 |
| And last year’s sea-met loves where Grindlay knows; | |
| But still the wild wind wakes off Gardafui, | |
| And hearts turn eastward with the P. and O’s. | |
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| Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less— | |
| Oh slothful mother of much idleness, | 10 |
| Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed! | |
| Nay, bear us gently! Wherefore need we press? | |
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| The Tragedy of all our East is laid | |
| On those white decks beneath the awning shade— | |
| Birth, absence, longing, laughter, love and tears, | 15 |
| And death unmaking ere the land is made. | |
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| And midnight madnesses of souls distraught | |
| Whom the cool seas call through the open port, | |
| So that the table lacks one place next morn, | |
| And for one forenoon men forego their sport. | 20 |
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| The shadow of the rigging to and fro | |
| Sways, shifts, and flickers on the spar-deck’s snow, | |
| And like a giant trampling in his chains, | |
| The screw-blades gasp and thunder deep below; | |
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| And, leagued to watch one flying-fish’s wings, | 25 |
| Heaven stoops to sea, and sea to Heaven clings; | |
| While, bent upon the ending of his toil, | |
| The hot sun strides, regarding not these things: | |
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| For the same wave that meets our stem in spray | |
| Bore Smith of Asia eastward yesterday, | 30 |
| And Delhi Jones and Brown of Midnapore | |
| To-morrow follow on the self-same way. | |
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| Linked in the chain of Empire one by one, | |
| Flushed with long leave, or tanned with many a sun, | |
| The Exiles’ Line brings out the exiles’ line | 35 |
| And ships them homeward when their work is done. | |
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| Yea, heedless of the shuttle through the loom, | |
| The flying keels fulfil the web of doom. | |
| Sorrow or shouting—what is that to them? | |
| Make out the cheque that pays for cabin room! | 40 |
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| And how so many score of times ye flit | |
| With wife and babe and caravan of kit, | |
| Not all thy travels past shall lower one fare, | |
| Not all thy tears abate one pound of it. | |
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| And how so high thine earth-born dignity, | 45 |
| Honour and state, go sink it in the sea, | |
| Till that great one upon the quarter deck, | |
| Brow-bound with gold, shall give thee leave to be. | |
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| Indeed, indeed from that same line we swear | |
| Off for all time, and mean it when we swear; | 50 |
| And then, and then we meet the Quartered Flag, | |
| And, surely for the last time, pay the fare. | |
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| And Green of Kensington, estrayed to view | |
| In three short months the world he never knew, | |
| Stares with blind eyes upon the Quartered Flag | 55 |
| And sees no more than yellow, red and blue. | |
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| But we, the gypsies of the East, but we— | |
| Waifs of the land and wastrels of the sea— | |
| Come nearer home beneath the Quartered Flag | |
| Than ever home shall come to such as we. | 60 |
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| The camp is struck, the bungalow decays, | |
| Dead friends and houses desert mark our ways, | |
| Till sickness send us down to Prince’s Dock | |
| To meet the changeless use of many days. | |
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| Bound in the wheel of Empire, one by one, | 65 |
| The chain-gangs of the East from sire to son, | |
| The Exiles’ Line takes out the exiles’ line | |
| And ships them homeward when their work is done. | |
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| How runs the old indictment? “Dear and slow,” | |
| So much and twice so much. We gird, but go. | 70 |
| For all the soul of our sad East is there, | |
| Beneath the house-flag of the P. and O. | |
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