Classic Poem

This shapeless canvas slug
You mumble your prayer-book over
Ere heaving it over the rail—
Was, only this morning, a hale
Crisp-haired, brass-bellied sea-rover—
A slave-driving bucko and thug.

What if the thing should rear—
Rise—loosen that charging tongue,
And lash us forrad like scud!
Our blood's afraid of his blood,
We're slaves to that heap of dung—
Yes, even now and here!

Aw, stand up to him, bullies!
They've hid his eyes in a sack—
Spit on him all you please!
His heart has crumbled like cheese,
Limp is his iron back,
His muscles are slack as pullies.

He didn't go like some—
Swept from the poop in a blast,
Knocked on the head with a boom;
His was no warrior's doom,
Fighting his ship to the last—
He died a clean death—from rum!

Him who stood like a tree
In the shock of the spouting tide,
The Great Sea loved as a son;
Yet say “Here lieth one—”
Over the place where he died
“Who hated and feared the sea!”

Throttled with cottage and wife,
With a child and a lamp and a stove,—
Stifled and drunken ashore;
Fled to the Sea as a whore,
And out of his restlessness wove
The dream of a landsman's life!

Green elms that rise like fountains—
Plains like a sea without swells—
A windless and desolate spot;
And, 'stead of the (?)
Or the great guns peeling like bells
The mighty quiet of mountains.