Her captain then was I, I was her crew, The mind that laid her course, the wake she drew, The waves that rose against her bows, the gales,-- Nay, I was more: I was her very sails Rounded before the wind, her eager keel, Her straining mast-heads, her responsive wheel, Her pennon stiffened like a swallow’s wing; Yes, I was all her slope and speed and swing, Whether by yellow lemons and blue sea She dawdled through the isles off Thessaly, Or saw the palms like sheaves of scimitars On desert’s verge below the sunset bars, Or passed the girdle of the planet where The Southern Cross looks over to the Bear, And strayed, cool Northerner beneath strange skies, Flouting the lure of tropic estuaries, Down that long coast, and saw Magellan’s Clouds arise.
And some that beat up Channel homeward-bound I watched, and wondered what they might have found, What alien ports enriched their teeming hold With crates of fruit or bars of unwrought gold? And thought how London clerks with paper-clips Had filed the bills of lading of those ships, Clerks that had never seen the embattled sea, But wrote down jettison and barratry, Perils, Adventures, and the Act of God, Having no vision of such wrath flung broad; Wrote down with weary and accustomed pen The classic dangers of sea-faring men; And wrote “Restraint of Princes,” and “the acts Of the King’s Enemies,” as vacant facts, Blind to the ambushed seas, the encircling roar Of angry nations foaming into war.
I saw a ship sailing, No other ship in sight. Steadily she was sailing Although the wind fell light. Although the wind was failing Still she kept sailing.
No hand there that steered her, No wind that strained her sheet. And as I gazed I feared her: Why should she be so fleet Since no crew’s chanty cheered her, And no wind neared her?
Her strange sure motion Carried her swiftly past; Over the rim of ocean I watched her dip her mast. Still no wind blew in motion Across the ocean.
THEY garnered wealth from far barbarian shores, From Caffa, Tyre, and Trebizond, And Tartar provinces beyond; Furs, spices, oranges, and slaves. High galleys waited, runged with tiers of oars, And rippled their reflection in the waves.
Bearded and serge-clad merchants, tightly-lipped, They stood in groups along the foreign quays Watching the cargo shipped By coloured sons of Asia; these Groaned loaded up the planks, and rolled Their burdens down the hold; And back the planks unburdened nimbly tripped, Their pumpkin-fluted turbans and their scarves Ballooning as they swarmed upon the wharves.