Then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers-
Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:

"Ho, we revel in our chains

O'er the sorrow that was Spain's;

Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!"

Up spake the soul of a grey Gothavn 'speckshioner— (He that led the flenching in the fleets of fair Dundee): "Oh, the ice-blink white and near,

And the bowhead breaching clear!

Will Ye whelm them all for wantonness that wallow in the sea?"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,

Crying: "Under Heaven, here is neither lead nor lee!
Must we sing for evermore

On the windless, glassy floor?

Take back your golden fiddles and we'll beat to open sea!"

Then stooped the Lord, and He called the good sea up to Him,

And 'stablished its borders unto all eternity,

That such as have no pleasure

For to praise the Lord by measure,

They may enter into galleons and serve Him on the sea.

Sun, Wind, and Cloud shall fail not from the face of it,
Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;
And the ships shall go abroad

To the Glory of the Lord

Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea!

THE EXILES' LINE

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.

Coupons, alas, depart with all their rows,
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.

Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less-
Oh slothful mother of much idleness,

Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed!
Nay, bear us gently! Wherefore need we press?

The Tragedy of all our East is laid
On those white decks beneath the awning shade-
Birth, absence, longing, laughter, love and tears,
And death unmaking ere the land is made.

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.

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;

And, leagued to watch one flying-fish's wings, 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:

For the same wave that meets our stem in spray Bore Smith of Asia eastward yesterday,

And Delhi Jones and Brown of Midnapore To-morrow follow on the self-same way.

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
And ships them homeward when their work is done.

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!

And how so many score of times ye Alit
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.

And how so high thine earth-born dignity,
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.

Indeed, indeed from that same line we swear
Off for all time, and mean it when we swear;

And then, and then we meet the Quartered Flag, And, surely for the last time, pay the fare.

And Green of Kensington, estrayed to view
In three short months the world he never knew,
Stares with blind eyes upon the Quartered Flag
And sees no more than yellow, red and blue.

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.

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.

Bound in the wheel of Empire, one by one,
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.

How runs the old indictment? "Dear and slow,"
So much and twice so much. We gird, but go.
For all the soul of our sad East is there,
Beneath the house-flag of the P. and O.

THE LONG TRAIL

THERE'S a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,

And the ricks stand grey to the sun,

Singing: "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover,

“And your English summer's done.”

You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,
And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;

You have heard the song-how long? how long?
Pull out on the trail again!

Ha' done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass,

We've seen the seasons through,

And it's time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,

Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail-the trail that is always new!

It's North you may run to the rime-ringed sun

Or South to the blind Horn's hate;

Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,

Or West to the Golden Gate

Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass,
And the wildest tales are true,

And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail,

the out trail,

And life runs large on the Long Trail-the trail that is always new.

The days are sick and cold, and the skies are grey and old, And the twice-breathed airs blow damp;

And I'd sell my tired soul for the bucking beam-sea roll Of a black Bilbao tramp,

With her load-line over her hatch, dear lass,

And a drunken Dago crew,

And her nose held down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail

From Cadiz south on the Long Trail-the trail that is always new.

There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid;

But the sweetest way to me is a ship's upon the sea
In the heel of the North-East Trade.