John Marr and Other Poems | Page 5

politesse, how urbane was he--?_"Oui, mademoiselle"--"Ma ch��re amie!"_
'T was Jack got up the ball at Naples,?Gay in the old Ohio glorious;?His hair was curled by the berth-deck barber,?Never you'd deemed him a cub of rude Boreas;?In tight little pumps, with the grand dames in
rout,?A-flinging his shapely foot all about;?His watch-chain with love's jeweled tokens
abounding,?Curls ambrosial shaking out odors,?Waltzing along the batteries, astounding?The gunner glum and the grim-visaged loaders.
Wife, where be all these blades, I wonder,?Pennoned fine fellows, so strong, so gay??Never their colors with a dip dived under;?Have they hauled them down in a lack-lustre
day,?Or beached their boats in the Far, Far Away??Hither and thither, blown wide asunder,?Where's this fleet, I wonder and wonder.?Slipt their cables, rattled their adieu,?(Whereaway pointing? to what rendezvous?)?Out of sight, out of mind, like the crack
Constitution,?And many a keel time never shall renew--?Bon Homme Dick o' the buff Revolution,?The Black Cockade_ and the staunch _True-Blue.
Doff hats to Decatur! But where is his blazon??Must merited fame endure time's wrong--?Glory's ripe grape wizen up to a raisin??Yes! for Nature teems, and the years are
strong,?And who can keep the tally o' the names that
fleet along!
But his frigate, wife, his bride? Would
blacksmiths brown?Into smithereens smite the solid old renown??Rivetting the bolts in the iron-clad's shell,?Hark to the hammers with a rat-tat-tat;?"Handier a derby than a laced cocked hat!?The Monitor was ugly, but she served us right
well,?Better than the Cumberland, a beauty and the
belle."
Better than the Cumberland!--Heart alive
in me!?That battlemented hull, Tantallon o' the sea,?Kicked in, as at Boston the taxed chests o' tea!?Ay, spurned by the ram, once a tall, shapely
craft,?But lopped by the Rebs to an iron-beaked
raft--?A blacksmith's unicorn in armor cap-a-pie.
Under the water-line a ram's blow is dealt:?And foul fall the knuckles that strike below the
belt.?Nor brave the inventions that serve to replace?The openness of valor while dismantling the
grace.
Aloof from all this and the never-ending game,?Tantamount to teetering, plot and counterplot;?Impenetrable armor--all-perforating shot;?Aloof, bless God, ride the war-ships of old,?A grand fleet moored in the roadstead of fame;?Not submarine sneaks with them are enrolled;?Their long shadows dwarf us, their flags are as
flame.
Don't fidget so, wife; an old man's passion?Amounts to no more than this smoke that I
puff;?There, there, now, buss me in good old fashion;?A died-down candle will flicker in the snuff.
But one last thing let your old babbler say,?What Decatur's coxswain said who was long
ago hearsed,?"Take in your flying-kites, for there comes a
lubber's day?When gallant things will go, and the threedeckers
first."
My pipe is smoked out, and the grog runs
slack;?But bowse away, wife, at your blessed Bohea;?This empty can here must needs solace me--?Nay, sweetheart, nay; I take that back;?Dick drinks from your eyes and he finds no
lack!
TOM DEADLIGHT
During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the?Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British _Dreadnaught, 98,_ wandering in his mind, though with glimpses of sanity, and starting up at whiles, sings by snatches his good-bye and last injunctions to two messmates, his watchers, one of whom fans the fevered tar with the flap of his old sou'wester. Some names and phrases, with here and there a line, or part of one; these, in his aberration, wrested into incoherency from their original connection and import, he voluntarily derives, as he does the measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife, and now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last?flutterings of distempered thought.
Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,--?Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain,?For I've received orders for to sail for the
Deadman,?But hope with the grand fleet to see you?again.
I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail
aback, boys;?I have hove my ship to, for the strike?soundings clear--?The black scud a'flying; but, by God's blessing,
dam' me,?Right up the Channel for the Deadman I'll?steer.
I have worried through the waters that are
called the Doldrums,?And growled at Sargasso that clogs while ye?grope--?Blast my eyes, but the light-ship is hid by the
mist, lads:--?Flying Dutchman--odds bobbs--off the?Cape of Good Hope!
But what's this I feel that is fanning my cheek,
Matt??The white goney's wing?--how she rolls!--?'t is the Cape!--?Give my kit to the mess, Jock, for kin none is
mine, none;?And tell Holy Joe to avast with the crape.
Dead reckoning, says Joe, it won't do to go by;?But they doused all the glims, Matt, in sky?t' other night.?Dead reckoning is good for to sail for the
Deadman;?And Tom Deadlight he thinks it may reckon?near right.
The signal!--it streams for the grand fleet to
anchor.?The captains--the trumpets--the hullabaloo!?Stand by for blue-blazes, and mind your
shank-painters,?For the Lord High Admiral, he's squinting?at you!
But give me my tot, Matt, before I roll over;?Jock, let's have your flipper, it's good for to?feel;?And don't sew me up without baccy in mouth,
boys,?And don't blubber like lubbers when I turn?up my keel.
JACK ROY
Kept up by