Verses 1889-1896

THE LAST RHYME OF TRUE THOMAS

  The King has called for priest and cup,   The King has taken spur and blade  To dub True Thomas a belted knight,   And all for the sake o’ the songs he made.  They have sought him high, they have sought him low,   They have sought him over down and lea;  They have found him by the milk-white thorn   That guards the gates o’ Faerie.       ‘Twas bent beneath and blue above,        Their eyes were held that they might not see       The kine that grazed beneath the knowes,        Oh, they were the Queens o’ Faerie!  “Now cease your song,” the King he said,   “Oh, cease your song and get you dight  To vow your vow and watch your arms,   For I will dub you a belted knight.  “For I will give you a horse o’ pride,   Wi’ blazon and spur and page and squire;  Wi’ keep and tail and seizin and law,   And land to hold at your desire.”  True Thomas smiled above his harp,   And turned his face to the naked sky,  Where, blown before the wastrel wind,   The thistle-down she floated by.  “I ha’ vowed my vow in another place,   And bitter oath it was on me,  I ha’ watched my arms the lee-long night,   Where five-score fighting men would flee.  “My lance is tipped o’ the hammered flame,   My shield is beat o’ the moonlight cold;  And I won my spurs in the Middle World,   A thousand fathom beneath the mould.  “And what should I make wi’ a horse o’ pride,   And what should I make wi’ a sword so brown,  But spill the rings o’ the Gentle Folk   And flyte my kin in the Fairy Town?  “And what should I make wi’ blazon and belt,   Wi’ keep and tail and seizin and fee,  And what should I do wi’ page and squire   That am a king in my own countrie?  “For I send east and I send west,   And I send far as my will may flee,  By dawn and dusk and the drinking rain,   And syne my Sendings return to me.  “They come wi’ news of the groanin’ earth,   They come wi’ news o’ the roarin’ sea,  Wi’ word of Spirit and Ghost and Flesh,   And man, that’s mazed among the three.”  The King he bit his nether lip,   And smote his hand upon his knee:  “By the faith o’ my soul, True Thomas,” he said,   “Ye waste no wit in courtesie!  “As I desire, unto my pride,   Can I make Earls by three and three,  To run before and ride behind   And serve the sons o’ my body.”  “And what care I for your row-foot earls,   Or all the sons o’ your body?  Before they win to the Pride o’ Name,   I trow they all ask leave o’ me.  “For I make Honour wi’ muckle mouth,   As I make Shame wi’ mincin’ feet,  To sing wi’ the priests at the market-cross,   Or run wi’ the dogs in the naked street.  “And some they give me the good red gold,   And some they give me the white money,  And some they give me a clout o’ meal,   For they be people o’ low degree.  “And the song I sing for the counted gold   The same I sing for the white money,  But best I sing for the clout o’ meal   That simple people given me.”  The King cast down a silver groat,   A silver groat o’ Scots money,  “If I come wi’ a poor man’s dole,” he said,   “True Thomas, will ye harp to me?”  “Whenas I harp to the children small,   They press me close on either hand.  And who are you,” True Thomas said,   “That you should ride while they must stand?  “Light down, light down from your horse o’ pride,   I trow ye talk too loud and hie,  And I will make you a triple word,   And syne, if ye dare, ye shall ‘noble me.”  He has lighted down from his horse o’ pride,   And set his back against the stone.  “Now guard you well,” True Thomas said,   “Ere I rax your heart from your breast-bone!”  True Thomas played upon his harp,   The fairy harp that couldna lee,  And the first least word the proud King heard,   It harpit the salt tear out o’ his ee.  “Oh, I see the love that I lost long syne,   I touch the hope that I may not see,  And all that I did o’ hidden shame,   Like little snakes they hiss at me.  “The sun is lost at noon – at noon!   The dread o’ doom has grippit me.  True Thomas, hide me under your cloak,   God wot, I’m little fit to dee!”       ‘Twas bent beneath and blue above —        ‘Twas open field and running flood —       Where, hot on heath and dike and wall,        The high sun warmed the adder’s brood.  “Lie down, lie down,” True Thomas said.   “The God shall judge when all is done.  But I will bring you a better word   And lift the cloud that I laid on.”  True Thomas played upon his harp,   That birled and brattled to his hand,  And the next least word True Thomas made,   It garred the King take horse and brand.  “Oh, I hear the tread o’ the fighting men,   I see the sun on splent and spear.  I mark the arrow outen the fern   That flies so low and sings so clear!  “Advance my standards to that war,   And bid my good knights prick and ride;  The gled shall watch as fierce a fight   As e’er was fought on the Border side!”       ‘Twas bent beneath and blue above,        ‘Twas nodding grass and naked sky,       Where, ringing up the wastrel wind,        The eyas stooped upon the pie.  True Thomas sighed above his harp,   And turned the song on the midmost string;  And the last least word True Thomas made,   He harpit his dead youth back to the King.  “Now I am prince, and I do well   To love my love withouten fear;  To walk wi’ man in fellowship,   And breathe my horse behind the deer.  “My hounds they bay unto the death,   The buck has couched beyond the burn,  My love she waits at her window   To wash my hands when I return.  “For that I live am I content   (Oh! I have seen my true love’s eyes)  To stand wi’ Adam in Eden-glade,   And run in the woods o’ Paradise!”       ‘Twas naked sky and nodding grass,        ‘Twas running flood and wastrel wind,       Where, checked against the open pass,        The red deer belled to call the hind.  True Thomas laid his harp away,   And louted low at the saddle-side;  He has taken stirrup and hauden rein,   And set the King on his horse o’ pride.  “Sleep ye or wake,” True Thomas said,   “That sit so still, that muse so long;  Sleep ye or wake? – till the latter sleep   I trow ye’ll not forget my song.  “I ha’ harpit a shadow out o’ the sun   To stand before your face and cry;  I ha’ armed the earth beneath your heel,   And over your head I ha’ dusked the sky.  “I ha’ harpit ye up to the throne o’ God,   I ha’ harpit your midmost soul in three;  I ha’ harpit ye down to the Hinges o’ Hell,   And – ye – would – make – a Knight o’ me!”

IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

  In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage   For food and fame and woolly horses’ pelt;  I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,   And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.  Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring   Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;  And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg   Were about me and beneath me and above.  But a rival, of Solutre, told the tribe my style was outre —   ‘Neath a tomahawk of diorite he fell.  And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart   Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.  Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting dogs fed full,   And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;  And I wiped my mouth and said, “It is well that they are dead,   For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong.”  But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,   And he told me in a vision of the night: —  “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,   And every single one of them is right!”  Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me   Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;  And I stepped beneath Time’s finger, once again a tribal singer   [And a minor poet certified by Tr – ll].  Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow,   When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;  When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,   And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.  Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,   Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;  Still we let our business slide – as we dropped the half-dressed hide —   To show a fellow-savage how to work.  Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting dogs fed full,   And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;  And I wiped my mouth and said, “It is well that they are dead,   For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong.”  Still the world is wondrous large, – seven seas from marge to marge, —   And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;  And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,   And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.  Here’s my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose   And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night: —  There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,   And – every – single – one – of – them – is – right!

THE STORY OF UNG

  Once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago,  Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow.  Fashioned the form of a tribesman – gaily he whistled and sung,  Working the snow with his fingers.  Read ye the Story of Ung!  Pleased was his tribe with that image – came in their hundreds to scan —  Handled it, smelt it, and grunted:  “Verily, this is a man!  Thus do we carry our lances – thus is a war-belt slung.  Lo! it is even as we are.  Glory and honour to Ung!”  Later he pictured an aurochs – later he pictured a bear —  Pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair —  Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone —  Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone.  Swift came the tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still —  Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill —  Hunters and fishers and trappers, presently whispering low:  “Yea, they are like – and it may be –  But how does the Picture-man know?”  “Ung – hath he slept with the Aurochs – watched where the Mastodon roam?  Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head – followed the Sabre-tooth home?  Nay!  These are toys of his fancy!  If he have cheated us so,  How is there truth in his image – the man that he fashioned of snow?”  Wroth was that maker of pictures – hotly he answered the call:  “Hunters and fishers and trappers, children and fools are ye all!  Look at the beasts when ye hunt them!”  Swift from the tumult he broke,  Ran to the cave of his father and told him the shame that they spoke.  And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft,  Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed:  “If they could see as thou seest they would do what thou hast done,  And each man would make him a picture, and – what would become of my son?  “There would be no pelts of the reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift,  Nor dole of the oily timber that comes on the Baltic drift;  No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale;  No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale.  “Thou hast not toiled at the fishing when the sodden trammels freeze,  Nor worked the war-boats outward through the rush of the rock-staked seas,  Yet they bring thee fish and plunder – full meal and an easy bed —  And all for the sake of thy pictures.”  And Ung held down his head.  “Thou hast not stood to the Aurochs when the red snow reeks of the fight;  Men have no time at the houghing to count his curls aright.  And the heart of the hairy Mammoth, thou sayest, they do not see,  Yet they save it whole from the beaches and broil the best for thee.  “And now do they press to thy pictures, with opened mouth and eye,  And a little gift in the doorway, and the praise no gift can buy:  But – sure they have doubted thy pictures, and that is a grievous stain —  Son that can see so clearly, return them their gifts again!”  And Ung looked down at his deerskins – their broad shell-tasselled bands —  And Ung drew downward his mitten and looked at his naked hands;  And he gloved himself and departed, and he heard his father, behind:  “Son that can see so clearly, rejoice that thy tribe is blind!”  Straight on the glittering ice-field, by the caves of the lost Dordogne,  Ung, a maker of pictures, fell to his scribing on bone  Even to mammoth editions.  Gaily he whistled and sung,  Blessing his tribe for their blindness.  Heed ye the Story of Ung!

THE THREE-DECKER

“The three-volume novel is extinct.”

  Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.  It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;  But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best —  The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.  Fair held the breeze behind us – ‘twas warm with lovers’ prayers.  We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs.  They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,  And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.  By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook,  Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took  With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed,  And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest.  We asked no social questions – we pumped no hidden shame —  We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came:  We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell.  We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but – Zuleika didn’t tell.  No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared,  The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.  ‘Twas fiddle in the forc’s’le – ‘twas garlands on the mast,  For every one got married, and I went ashore at last.  I left ‘em all in couples a-kissing on the decks.  I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques.  In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed,  I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest!  That route is barred to steamers:  you’ll never lift again  Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.  They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise  In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.  Swing round your aching search-light – ‘twill show no haven’s peace.  Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas!  Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest —  And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest!  But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail,  At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,  Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,  You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.  You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread;  You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ‘neath her leaping figure-head;  While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine  Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine!  Hull down – hull down and under – she dwindles to a speck,  With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck.  All’s well – all’s well aboard her – she’s left you far behind,  With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind.  Her crew are babes or madmen?  Her port is all to make?  You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake?  Well, tinker up your engines – you know your business best —  She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!

AN AMERICAN

  The American Spirit speaks:  “If the Led Striker call it a strike,   Or the papers call it a war,  They know not much what I am like,   Nor what he is, my Avatar.”  Through many roads, by me possessed,   He shambles forth in cosmic guise;  He is the Jester and the Jest,   And he the Text himself applies.  The Celt is in his heart and hand,   The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;  Where, cosmopolitanly planned,   He guards the Redskin’s dry reserve.  His easy unswept hearth he lends   From Labrador to Guadeloupe;  Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,   He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.  Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown,   Or panic-blinded stabs and slays:  Blatant he bids the world bow down,   Or cringing begs a crust of praise;  Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,   He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.  His hands are black with blood – his heart   Leaps, as a babe’s, at little things.  But, through the shift of mood and mood,   Mine ancient humour saves him whole —  The cynic devil in his blood   That bids him mock his hurrying soul;  That bids him flout the Law he makes,   That bids him make the Law he flouts,  Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes   The drumming guns that – have no doubts;  That checks him foolish – hot and fond,   That chuckles through his deepest ire,  That gilds the slough of his despond   But dims the goal of his desire;  Inopportune, shrill-accented,   The acrid Asiatic mirth  That leaves him, careless ‘mid his dead,   The scandal of the elder earth.  How shall he clear himself, how reach   Your bar or weighed defence prefer?  A brother hedged with alien speech   And lacking all interpreter.  Which knowledge vexes him a space;   But while Reproof around him rings,  He turns a keen untroubled face   Home, to the instant need of things.  Enslaved, illogical, elate,   He greets th’ embarrassed Gods, nor fears  To shake the iron hand of Fate   Or match with Destiny for beers.  Lo, imperturbable he rules,   Unkempt, disreputable, vast —  And, in the teeth of all the schools,   I – I shall save him at the last!

THE “MARY GLOSTER”

  I’ve paid for your sickest fancies; I’ve humoured your crackedest whim —  Dick, it’s your daddy, dying; you’ve got to listen to him!  Good for a fortnight, am I?  The doctor told you?  He lied.  I shall go under by morning, and –  Put that nurse outside.  ‘Never seen death yet, Dickie?  Well, now is your time to learn,  And you’ll wish you held my record before it comes to your turn.  Not counting the Line and the Foundry, the yards and the village, too,  I’ve made myself and a million; but I’m damned if I made you.  Master at two-and-twenty, and married at twenty-three —  Ten thousand men on the pay-roll, and forty freighters at sea!  Fifty years between ‘em, and every year of it fight,  And now I’m Sir Anthony Gloster, dying, a baronite:  For I lunched with his Royal ‘Ighness – what was it the papers a-had?  “Not least of our merchant-princes.”  Dickie, that’s me, your dad!  I didn’t begin with askings.  I took my job and I stuck;  And I took the chances they wouldn’t, an’ now they’re calling it luck.  Lord, what boats I’ve handled – rotten and leaky and old!  Ran ‘em, or – opened the bilge-cock, precisely as I was told.  Grub that ‘ud bind you crazy, and crews that ‘ud turn you grey,  And a big fat lump of insurance to cover the risk on the way.  The others they dursn’t do it; they said they valued their life  (They’ve served me since as skippers).  I went, and I took my wife.  Over the world I drove ‘em, married at twenty-three,  And your mother saving the money and making a man of me.  I was content to be master, but she said there was better behind;  She took the chances I wouldn’t, and I followed your mother blind.  She egged me to borrow the money, an’ she helped me to clear the loan,  When we bought half shares in a cheap ‘un and hoisted a flag of our own.  Patching and coaling on credit, and living the Lord knew how,  We started the Red Ox freighters – we’ve eight-and-thirty now.  And those were the days of clippers, and the freights were clipper-freights,  And we knew we were making our fortune, but she died in Macassar Straits —  By the Little Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank —  And we dropped her in fourteen fathom; I pricked it off where she sank.  Owners we were, full owners, and the boat was christened for her,  And she died in the Mary Gloster.  My heart, how young we were!  So I went on a spree round Java and well-nigh ran her ashore,  But your mother came and warned me and I wouldn’t liquor no more:  Strict I stuck to my business, afraid to stop or I’d think,  Saving the money (she warned me), and letting the other men drink.  And I met M’Cullough in London (I’d turned five ‘undred then),  And ‘tween us we started the Foundry – three forges and twenty men:  Cheap repairs for the cheap ‘uns.  It paid, and the business grew,  For I bought me a steam-lathe patent, and that was a gold mine too.  “Cheaper to build ‘em than buy ‘em,” I said, but M’Cullough he shied,  And we wasted a year in talking before we moved to the Clyde.  And the Lines were all beginning, and we all of us started fair,  Building our engines like houses and staying the boilers square.  But M’Cullough ‘e wanted cabins with marble and maple and all,  And Brussels an’ Utrecht velvet, and baths and a Social Hall,  And pipes for closets all over, and cutting the frames too light,  But M’Cullough he died in the Sixties, and –  Well, I’m dying to-night..  I knew – I knew what was coming, when we bid on the Byfleet’s keel —  They piddled and piffled with iron:  I’d given my orders for steel!  Steel and the first expansions.  It paid, I tell you, it paid,  When we came with our nine-knot freighters and collared the long-run trade!  And they asked me how I did it, and I gave ‘em the Scripture text,  “You keep your light so shining a little in front o’ the next!”   They copied all they could follow, but they couldn’t copy my mind,  And I left ‘em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.  Then came the armour-contracts, but that was M’Cullough’s side;  He was always best in the Foundry, but better, perhaps, he died.  I went through his private papers; the notes was plainer than print;  And I’m no fool to finish if a man’ll give me a hint.  (I remember his widow was angry.)  So I saw what the drawings meant,  And I started the six-inch rollers, and it paid me sixty per cent —  Sixty per cent with failures, and more than twice we could do,  And a quarter-million to credit, and I saved it all for you!  I thought – it doesn’t matter – you seemed to favour your ma,  But you’re nearer forty than thirty, and I know the kind you are.  Harrer an’ Trinity College!  I ought to ha’ sent you to sea —  But I stood you an education, an’ what have you done for me?  The things I knew was proper you wouldn’t thank me to give,  And the things I knew was rotten you said was the way to live.  For you muddled with books and pictures, an’ china an’ etchin’s an’ fans,  And your rooms at college was beastly – more like a whore’s than a man’s —  Till you married that thin-flanked woman, as white and as stale as a bone,  An’ she gave you your social nonsense; but where’s that kid o’ your own?  I’ve seen your carriages blocking the half o’ the Cromwell Road,  But never the doctor’s brougham to help the missus unload.  (So there isn’t even a grandchild, an’ the Gloster family’s done.)  Not like your mother, she isn’t.  She carried her freight each run.  But they died, the pore little beggars!  At sea she had ‘em – they died.  Only you, an’ you stood it; you haven’t stood much beside.  Weak, a liar, and idle, and mean as a collier’s whelp  Nosing for scraps in the galley.  No help – my son was no help!  So he gets three ‘undred thousand, in trust and the interest paid.  I wouldn’t give it you, Dickie – you see, I made it in trade.  You’re saved from soiling your fingers, and if you have no child,  It all comes back to the business.  Gad, won’t your wife be wild!  ‘Calls and calls in her carriage, her ‘andkerchief up to ‘er eye:  “Daddy! dear daddy’s dyin’!” and doing her best to cry.  Grateful?  Oh, yes, I’m grateful, but keep her away from here.  Your mother ‘ud never ha’ stood ‘er, and, anyhow, women are queer..  There’s women will say I’ve married a second time.  Not quite!  But give pore Aggie a hundred, and tell her your lawyers’ll fight.  She was the best o’ the boiling – you’ll meet her before it ends;  I’m in for a row with the mother – I’ll leave you settle my friends:  For a man he must go with a woman, which women don’t understand —  Or the sort that say they can see it they aren’t the marrying brand.  But I wanted to speak o’ your mother that’s Lady Gloster still —  I’m going to up and see her, without it’s hurting the will.  Here!  Take your hand off the bell-pull.  Five thousand’s waiting for you,  If you’ll only listen a minute, and do as I bid you do.  They’ll try to prove me crazy, and, if you bungle, they can;  And I’ve only you to trust to!  (O God, why ain’t he a man?)  There’s some waste money on marbles, the same as M’Cullough tried —  Marbles and mausoleums – but I call that sinful pride.  There’s some ship bodies for burial – we’ve carried ‘em, soldered and packed;  Down in their wills they wrote it, and nobody called them cracked.  But me – I’ve too much money, and people might…  All my fault:  It come o’ hoping for grandsons and buying that Wokin’ vault.  I’m sick o’ the ‘ole dam’ business; I’m going back where I came.  Dick, you’re the son o’ my body, and you’ll take charge o’ the same!  I want to lie by your mother, ten thousand mile away,  And they’ll want to send me to Woking; and that’s where you’ll earn your pay.  I’ve thought it out on the quiet, the same as it ought to be done —  Quiet, and decent, and proper – an’ here’s your orders, my son.  You know the Line?  You don’t, though.  You write to the Board, and tell  Your father’s death has upset you an’ you’re goin’ to cruise for a spell,  An’ you’d like the Mary Gloster – I’ve held her ready for this —  They’ll put her in working order and you’ll take her out as she is.  Yes, it was money idle when I patched her and put her aside  (Thank God, I can pay for my fancies!) – the boat where your mother died,  By the Little Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank,  We dropped her – I think I told you – and I pricked it off where she sank —  [‘Tiny she looked on the grating – that oily, treacly sea – ]  ‘Hundred and eighteen East, remember, and South just three.  Easy bearings to carry – three South – three to the dot;  But I gave M’Andrew a copy in case of dying – or not.  And so you’ll write to M’Andrew, he’s Chief of the Maori Line;  They’ll give him leave, if you ask ‘em and say it’s business o’ mine.  I built three boats for the Maoris, an’ very well pleased they were,  An’ I’ve known Mac since the Fifties, and Mac knew me – and her.  After the first stroke warned me I sent him the money to keep  Against the time you’d claim it, committin’ your dad to the deep;  For you are the son o’ my body, and Mac was my oldest friend,  I’ve never asked ‘im to dinner, but he’ll see it out to the end.  Stiff-necked Glasgow beggar, I’ve heard he’s prayed for my soul,  But he couldn’t lie if you paid him, and he’d starve before he stole!  He’ll take the Mary in ballast – you’ll find her a lively ship;  And you’ll take Sir Anthony Gloster, that goes on ‘is wedding-trip,  Lashed in our old deck-cabin with all three port-holes wide,  The kick o’ the screw beneath him and the round blue seas outside!  Sir Anthony Gloster’s carriage – our ‘ouse-flag flyin’ free —  Ten thousand men on the pay-roll and forty freighters at sea!  He made himself and a million, but this world is a fleetin’ show,  And he’ll go to the wife of ‘is bosom the same as he ought to go —  By the heel of the Paternosters – there isn’t a chance to mistake —  And Mac’ll pay you the money as soon as the bubbles break!  Five thousand for six weeks’ cruising, the staunchest freighter afloat,  And Mac he’ll give you your bonus the minute I’m out o’ the boat!  He’ll take you round to Macassar, and you’ll come back alone;  He knows what I want o’ the Mary…  I’ll do what I please with my own.  Your mother ‘ud call it wasteful, but I’ve seven-and-thirty more;  I’ll come in my private carriage and bid it wait at the door..  For my son ‘e was never a credit:  ‘e muddled with books and art,  And ‘e lived on Sir Anthony’s money and ‘e broke Sir Anthony’s heart.  There isn’t even a grandchild, and the Gloster family’s done —  The only one you left me, O mother, the only one!  Harrer and Trinity College – me slavin’ early an’ late —  An’ he thinks I’m dying crazy, and you’re in Macassar Strait!  Flesh o’ my flesh, my dearie, for ever an’ ever amen,  That first stroke come for a warning; I ought to ha’ gone to you then,  But – cheap repairs for a cheap ‘un – the doctors said I’d do:  Mary, why didn’t you warn me?  I’ve allus heeded to you,  Excep’ – I know – about women; but you are a spirit now;  An’, wife, they was only women, and I was a man.  That’s how.  An’ a man ‘e must go with a woman, as you could not understand;  But I never talked ‘em secrets.  I paid ‘em out o’ hand.  Thank Gawd, I can pay for my fancies!  Now what’s five thousand to me,  For a berth off the Paternosters in the haven where I would be?  I believe in the Resurrection, if I read my Bible plain,  But I wouldn’t trust ‘em at Wokin’; we’re safer at sea again.  For the heart it shall go with the treasure – go down to the sea in ships.  I’m sick of the hired women – I’ll kiss my girl on her lips!  I’ll be content with my fountain, I’ll drink from my own well,  And the wife of my youth shall charm me – an’ the rest can go to Hell!  (Dickie, he will, that’s certain.)  I’ll lie in our standin’-bed,  An’ Mac’ll take her in ballast – an’ she trims best by the head..  Down by the head an’ sinkin’, her fires are drawn and cold,  And the water’s splashin’ hollow on the skin of the empty hold —  Churning an’ choking and chuckling, quiet and scummy and dark —  Full to her lower hatches and risin’ steady.  Hark!  That was the after-bulkhead…  She’s flooded from stem to stern..  Never seen death yet, Dickie?..  Well, now is your time to learn!