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 perilous 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,

30

Then moves his head, as though he said, “Fear nothing, here am I!"

Swing in your strokes in crder, 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!

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 obdurate gloom, he darkens down at last:

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 the 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 sez unicorn,

And send him foiled and bellowing back, for al his ivory horn;

To leave the subtle sworder-fish of bony blade for

lorn;

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 black-browsing ocean-calves; or, haply in

a cove,

60

Shell-strewn, and consecrate of old to some Undine's love,

To find the long-haired mermaidens; or, hard by icy lands,

To wrestle with the Sea-serpent upon cerulean sands.

O broad-armed Fisher of the Deep, whose sports

can equal thine?

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.

O lodger in the sea-king's halls, couldst thou but understand

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,

70

Thine iron side would swell with pride; thou 'dst leap within the sea!

Give honour to their memories who left the pleas

ant strand,:

To shed their blood so freely for the love of

Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy churchyard grave,

So freely for a restless bed amid the tossing

wave;

Oh, though our Anchor may not be all I have

fondly sung, Honour, him for their memory, whose bones he

goes among!

80

1832.

Samuel Ferguson.

SEAWEED

WHEN descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,

Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,

Silver-flashing.

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries

The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks of ships, and drifting

Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting