The Harbours of England | Page 9

their broad and gradual curves,
of the sweep of the green surges they know so well, and of the hours
when those old sides of seared timber, all ashine with the sea, plunge
and dip into the deep green purity of the mounded waves more joyfully
than a deer lies down among the grass of spring, the soft white cloud of
foam opening momentarily at the bows, and fading or flying high into
the breeze where the sea-gulls toss and shriek,--the joy and beauty of it,
all the while, so mingled with the sense of unfathomable danger, and
the human effort and sorrow going on perpetually from age to age,
waves rolling forever, and winds moaning forever, and faithful hearts
trusting and sickening forever, and brave lives dashed away about the
rattling beach like weeds forever; and still at the helm of every lonely
boat, through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand, who spread
the fisher's net over the dust of the Sidonian palaces, and gave into the
fisher's hand the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Next after the fishing-boat--which, as I said, in the architecture of the
sea represents the cottage, more especially the pastoral or agricultural
cottage, watchful over some pathless domain of moorland or arable, as
the fishing-boat swims, humbly in the midst of the broad green fields
and hills of ocean, out of which it has to win such fruit as they can give,
and to compass with net or drag such flocks as it may find,--next to this
ocean-cottage ranks in interest, it seems to me, the small, over-wrought,
under-crewed, ill-caulked merchant brig or schooner; the kind of ship
which first shows its couple of thin masts over the low fields or
marshes as we near any third-rate sea-port; and which is sure
somewhere to stud the great space of glittering water, seen from any
sea-cliff, with its four or five square-set sails. Of the larger and more
polite tribes of merchant vessels, three-masted, and passenger-carrying,
I have nothing to say, feeling in general little sympathy with people
who want to go anywhere; nor caring much about anything, which in

the essence of it expresses a desire to get to other sides of the world;
but only for homely and stay-at-home ships, that live their life and die
their death about English rocks. Neither have I any interest in the
higher branches of commerce, such as traffic with spice islands, and
porterage of painted tea-chests or carved ivory; for all this seems to me
to fall under the head of commerce of the drawing-room; costly, but not
venerable. I respect in the merchant service only those ships that carry
coals, herrings, salt, timber, iron, and such other commodities, and that
have disagreeable odor, and unwashed decks. But there are few things
more impressive to me than one of these ships lying up against some
lonely quay in a black sea-fog, with the furrow traced under its tawny
keel far in the harbor slime. The noble misery that there is in it, the
might of its rent and strained unseemliness, its wave-worn melancholy,
resting there for a little while in the comfortless ebb, unpitied, and
claiming no pity; still less honored, least of all conscious of any claim
to honor; casting and craning by due balance whatever is in its hold up
to the pier, in quiet truth of time; spinning of wheel, and slackening of
rope, and swinging of spade, in as accurate cadence as a waltz music;
one or two of its crew, perhaps, away forward, and a hungry boy and
yelping dog eagerly interested in something from which a blue dull
smoke rises out of pot or pan; but dark-browed and silent, their limbs
slack, like the ropes above them, entangled as they are in those
inextricable meshes about the patched knots and heaps of ill-reefed
sable sail. What a majestic sense of service in all that languor! the rest
of human limbs and hearts, at utter need, not in sweet meadows or soft
air, but in harbor slime and biting fog; so drawing their breath once
more, to go out again, without lament, from between the two skeletons
of pier-heads, vocal with wash of under wave, into the gray troughs of
tumbling brine; there, as they can, with slacked rope, and patched sail,
and leaky hull, again to roll and stagger far away amidst the wind and
salt sleet, from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, winning day by day
their daily bread; and for last reward, when their old hands, on some
winter night, lose feeling along the frozen ropes, and their old eyes
miss mark of the lighthouse quenched in foam, the so-long impossible
Rest, that shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more,--their eyes and
mouths filled