We bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a care, The flash that, wheeling inland, wakes his sleeping wife to prayer. From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chains The lover from the sea-rim drawn-his love in English lanes. We greet the clippers wing-and-wing that race the Southern wool; We warn the crawling cargo-tanks of Bremen, Leith, and Hull; To each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea The white wall-sided warships or the whalers of Dundee! Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guardports of the Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn! main, The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back again! Go, get you gone up-Channel with the sea-crust on your plates; Go, get you into London with the burden of your freights! Haste, for they talk of Empire there, and say, if any seek, The Lights of England sent you and by silence shall ye speak! THE SONG OF THE DEAD HEAR now the Song of the Dead-in the North by the torn berg-edges They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges. Song of the Dead in the South-in the sun by their skeleton horses, Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses. Song of the Dead in the East—in the heat-rotted jungle-hollows, Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof—in the brake of the buffalowallows. Song of the Dead in the West—in the Barrens, the pass that betrayed them, Where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the grave-mound they made them; Hear now the Song of the Dead! I We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down. Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need, Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead. As the deer breaks-as the steer breaks-from the herd where they graze, In the faith of little children we went on our ways. Then the wood failed-then the food failed-then the last water dried In the faith of little children we lay down and died. On the sand-drift-on the veldt-side-in the fern-scrub we lay, That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way. By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own! When Drake went down to the Horn Which never shall close again By day nor yet by night, While man shall take his life to stake At risk of shoal or main But standeth even so As now we witness here, While men depart, of joyful heart, (As now bear witness here!) II We have fed our sea for a thousand years Though there's never a wave of all her waves We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest, There's never a flood goes shoreward now But lifts a keel we manned; There's never an ebb goes seaward now If blood be the price of admiralty, We must feed our sea for a thousand years, As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind, Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef THE DEEP-SEA CABLES THE wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are. There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep. Here in the womb of the world-here on the tie-ribs of earth Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beatWarning, sorrow, and gain, salutation and mirth— For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet. They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time; Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun. Hush! Men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime, And a new Word runs between: whispering, "Let us be one!" THE SONG OF THE SONS ONE from the ends of the earth-gifts at an open door- freed, Mother, be proud of thy seed! Those that have stayed at thy knees, Mother, go call them in We that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our kin. Not in the dark do we fight-haggle and flout and gibe; Selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe. Gifts have we only to-day-Love without promise or feeHear, for thy children speak, from the uttermost parts of the sea! THE SONG OF THE CITIES BOMBAY ROYAL and Dower-royal, I the Queen Fronting thy richest sea with richer hands- CALCUTTA Me the Sea-captain loved, the River built, Death in my hands, but Gold! |