THE DERELICT

(1894)

'And reports the derelict "Margaret Pollock" still at

I

WAS the staunchest of our fleet

Till the sea rose beneath our feet

Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.

Into his pits he stamped my crew,

Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
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

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;

And jarred at every roll

The gear that was my soul

Answers the anguish of my beams' complaining.

THE DERELICT

For life that crammed me full,

Gangs of the prying gull

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

Through all my points I swingSwing 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!

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

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,

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-
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

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!

THE ANSWER

(1892)

ROSE, in tatters on the garden path,

Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His
Wrath,

Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush
Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush.
And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,
Had pity, whispering to that luckless one.
'Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well-
What voices heardst thou when thy petals fell?'
And the Rose answered, 'In that evil hour

A voice said, "Father, wherefore falls the flower?
For lo, the very gossamers are still."

And a voice answered, "Son, by Allah's will!”

Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward,
Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord:
'Sister, before We smote the dark in twain,
Ere yet the stars saw one another plain,

Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task
That thou shouldst fall, and such an one should ask.'
Whereat the withered flower, all content,

Died as they die whose days are innocent;

While he who questioned why the flower fell

Caught hold of God and saved his soul from Hell.

Y

THE SONG OF THE BANJO

(1894)

OU couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile-
You mustn't leave a fiddle in the damp-
You couldn't raft an organ up the Nile,

And play it in an Equatorial swamp.
I travel with the cooking-pots and pails-

I'm sandwiched 'tween the coffee and the porkAnd when the dusty column checks and tails, You should hear me spur the rearguard to a walk!

With my 'Pilly-willy-winky-winky popp!'
[Oh, it's any tune that comes into my head!]
So I keep 'em moving forward till they drop;
So I play 'em up to water and to bed.

In the silence of the camp before the fight,

When it's good to make your will and say your prayer, You can hear my 'strumpty-tumpty' overnight Explaining ten to one was always fair.

I'm the Prophet of the Utterly Absurd,

Of the Patently Impossible and Vain—

And when the Thing that Couldn't has occurred,
Give me time to change my leg and go again.