University of Virginia Library

II.

But Captain Harmanus found out to his cost,
He had footed his bill without leave from his host;
That slippers of silk, and a downy bed,
Might still to a thousand woes be wed;
That in brown-stone fronts brown studies might be,
And rosewood furniture furnish ennui.
Familiar long with the tempest's strife,
Harmanus he missed his former life:
He missed the ship, that never missed stays,
He missed his sailors, with nautical ways;
He missed the heave of the foaming sea;
He missed the white-caps, driving free;
He missed the noise of the angry gale;
He missed the stretched and bellying sail;
He missed his cabin and worn-out traps;
He missed—no, he didn't! his dram of schnapps;
Though never yet knowing of married bliss,
He found his bachelor life amiss;
And, in spite of his brown-stone house and pelf,
Would have been very glad to have missed himself.
For hours by the windows he twiddled his thumbs,
With an eloquence silent as Orator Mum's;
He yawned and he gaped and he dawdled away,
From morning till evening, the wearisome day;
He took up the papers the hours to amuse,
And read thrice over the nautical news;
He travelled his parlors to and fro,
With a quarter-deck tramp and a whistle low;
Till it seemed at length, that Care, so grim,
Having killed a cat, was at work upon him.