John Marr and Other Poems | Page 5

tempers be?
Where's Commander All-a-Tanto?
Where's Orlop Bob singing up
from below?
Where's Rhyming Ned? has he spun his last
canto?
Where's Jewsharp Jim? Where's Ringadoon
Joe?
Ah, for the music over and done,
The band all dismissed save
the droned
trombone!
Where's Glenn o' the gun-room, who loved
Hot-Scotch--
Glen, prompt and cool in a perilous watch?
Where's
flaxen-haired Phil? a gray lieutenant?
Or rubicund, flying a dignified
pennant?
But where sleeps his brother?--the cruise it was
o'er,
But ah, for death's grip that welcomed him
ashore!
Where's Sid, the cadet, so frank in his brag,
Whose toast
was audacious--"_Here's Sid, and

Sid's flag!_"
Like holiday-craft that have sunk unknown,
May a lark
of a lad go lonely down?
Who takes the census under the sea?
Can
others like old ensigns be,
Bunting I hoisted to flutter at the gaff--

Rags in end that once were flags
Gallant streaming from the staff?
Such scurvy doom could the chances deal
To Top-Gallant Harry and
Jack Genteel?
Lo, Genteel Jack in hurricane weather,
Shagged like
a bear, like a red lion roaring;
But O, so fine in his chapeau and
feather,
In port to the ladies never once jawing;
All bland politesse,
how urbane was he--
_"Oui, mademoiselle"--"Ma chère 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