John Marr and Other Poems | Page 2

her tea,
My old
woman she says to me,
"Feel ye, old man, how the season mellows?"

And why should I not, blessed heart alive,
Here mellowing myself,
past sixty-five,
To think o' the May-time o' pennoned young
fellows
This stripped old hulk here for years may
survive.
Ere yet, long ago, we were spliced, Bonny Blue,
(Silvery it gleams
down the moon-glade o' time,
Ah, sugar in the bowl and berries in the
prime!)
Coxswain I o' the Commodore's crew,--
Under me the
fellows that manned his fine gig,
Spinning him ashore, a king in full
fig.
Chirrupy even when crosses rubbed me,
Bridegroom Dick
lieutenants dubbed me.
Pleasant at a yarn, Bob o' Linkum in a song,

Diligent in duty and nattily arrayed,
Favored I was, wife, and
fleeted right along;
And though but a tot for such a tall grade,
A
high quartermaster at last I was made.
All this, old lassie, you have heard before,
But you listen again for
the sake e'en o' me;
No babble stales o' the good times o' yore
To
Joan, if Darby the babbler be.
Babbler?--O' what? Addled brains, they
forget!
O--quartermaster I; yes, the signals set,
Hoisted the ensign,
mended it when frayed,
Polished up the binnacle, minded the helm,

And prompt every order blithely obeyed.
To me would the officers
say a word cheery--
Break through the starch o' the quarter-deck

realm;
His coxswain late, so the Commodore's pet.
Ay, and in
night-watches long and weary,
Bored nigh to death with the navy
etiquette,
Yearning, too, for fun, some younker, a cadet,
Dropping
for time each vain bumptious trick,
Boy-like would unbend to
Bridegroom Dick.
But a limit there was--a check, d' ye see:
Those
fine young aristocrats knew their degree.
Well, stationed aft where their lordships
keep,--
Seldom going forward excepting to sleep,--
I, boozing now
on by-gone years,
My betters recall along with my peers.
Recall
them? Wife, but I see them plain:
Alive, alert, every man stirs again.

Ay, and again on the lee-side pacing,
My spy-glass carrying, a
truncheon in show,
Turning at the taffrail, my footsteps retracing,

Proud in my duty, again methinks I go.
And Dave, Dainty Dave, I
mark where he
stands,
Our trim sailing-master, to time the high-noon,
That
thingumbob sextant perplexing eyes and
hands,
Squinting at the sun, or twigging o' the moon;
Then,
touching his cap to Old Chock-a-Block
Commanding the
quarter-deck,--"Sir, twelve
o'clock."
Where sails he now, that trim sailing-master,
Slender, yes, as the
ship's sky-s'l pole?
Dimly I mind me of some sad disaster--
Dainty
Dave was dropped from the navy-roll!
And ah, for old Lieutenant
Chock-a-Block--
Fast, wife, chock-fast to death's black dock!

Buffeted about the obstreperous ocean,
Fleeted his life, if lagged his
promotion.
Little girl, they are all, all gone, I think,
Leaving
Bridegroom Dick here with lids that
wink.

Where is Ap Catesby? The fights fought of
yore
Famed him, and laced him with epaulets, and
more.
But fame is a wake that after-wakes cross,
And the waters
wallow all, and laugh
Where's the loss?
But John Bull's bullet in his shoulder bearing

Ballasted Ap in his long sea-faring.
The middies they ducked to the
man who had
messed
With Decatur in the gun-room, or forward
pressed
Fighting beside Perry, Hull, Porter, and the
rest.
Humped veteran o' the Heart-o'-Oak war,
Moored long in haven
where the old heroes are,
Never on you did the iron-clads jar!
Your
open deck when the boarder assailed,
The frank old heroic
hand-to-hand then availed.
But where's Guert Gan? Still heads he the van?
As before Vera-Cruz,
when he dashed splashing
through
The blue rollers sunned, in his brave gold-andblue,
And, ere his cutter in keel took the strand,
Aloft waved his sword on
the hostile land!
Went up the cheering, the quick chanticleering;
All
hands vying--all colors flying:
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" and "Row, boys,
row!"
"Hey, Starry Banner!" "Hi, Santa Anna!"
Old Scott's young
dash at Mexico.
Fine forces o' the land, fine forces o' the sea,
Fleet, army, and
flotilla--tell, heart o' me,
Tell, if you can, whereaway now they be!

But ah, how to speak of the hurricane
unchained--
The Union's strands parted in the hawser
over-strained;
Our flag blown to shreds, anchors gone
altogether--
The dashed fleet o' States in Secession's foul
weather.
Lost in the smother o' that wide public stress,
In hearts, private hearts,
what ties there were
snapped!
Tell, Hal--vouch, Will, o' the ward-room mess,
On you
how the riving thunder-bolt clapped.
With a bead in your eye and
beads in your glass,
And a grip o' the flipper, it was part and pass:

"Hal, must it be: Well, if come indeed the
shock,
To North or to South, let the victory cleave,
Vaunt it he may
on his dung-hill the cock,
But Uncle Sam's eagle never crow will,
believe."
Sentiment: ay, while suspended hung all,
Ere the guns against Sumter
opened there
the ball,
And partners were taken, and the red dance
began,
War's red dance o' death!--Well, we, to a man,
We sailors o'
the North, wife, how could we
lag?--
Strike with your kin, and you stick to the flag!
But to sailors
o' the South that easy way was
barred.
To some, dame, believe (and I speak o' what I
know),
Wormwood the trial and the Uzzite's black

shard;
And the faithfuller the heart, the crueller the
throe.
Duty? It pulled with more than