University of Virginia Library

Canto the First. The Sea-boy.

I.

II.

Such sights and sounds inspired the growing Boy
With wondering exultation; and the joy
Of deeper thought and loftier feeling lent
To the mere gladness of temperament.
But books and fancy and old fishers' tales
Of glorious climes beyond these mists and gales
Kept his young heart too restlessly alive
With impulses resistless, such as drive
That insect-dragon scaly-winged to strive
And struggle through his chasmed channel's mud,
And reckless dash into the splendour-flood,
The new wide pool of light he feels and sees;
Such longings, as, when Summer's searching heats
Find out the butterflies in their retreats,
They yearn with, till, unvexed by any breeze,
The velvet-winged ones at her sweet command,
Sole, or in slow-revolving twos and threes,
Float in a crimson flutter through the land.
Thus the Boy fevered till his sire's consent
He gained to gratify his natural bent
Towards sailor life, and follow o'er the main,
Although the favourite son, his brethren twain.
So, freed from schools and tasks, all hopeful glee,
Away he went at twelve years old to Sea.

III.

IV.

And many a vacant hour, on many a theme,
Our thoughtful Sea-boy found to muse or dream;
Those vigils which the sailor needs must keep
In the sky-girt seclusion of the Deep.
Oft when the playful billows, lightly curled,
Run past the ship, and quiet seems as sleep,
The lone retreat that roams about the world—
That white-winged monastery moving still
Of rugged celibates against their will.
Or when in darkness, towards her goal unseen,
On moonless midnights mournfully serene,
She seems, as by some instinct, self-inspired,
Still pressing on her eager quest untired;
While, the obscurely-branching clouds between,
Crossed stays and braces—silent rocking spars
Seem mingling dimly with the dancing stars!
Or when, if steady-breathing trade-winds blow,
No shift of sails for days required, the crew
About the deck their quiet tasks pursue;
The heavy-dragging sail with rough-skilled hands
They patch, or splice the rope's stiff-plaited strands,
Or twirl with balanced backward steps and slow
The whizzing yarn, still pondering as they go
The long-drawn tale it types of blended joy and woe.
Or when, her topsails squared, with plunging ease,
The ship goes reeling right before the breeze;
And he who has the watch, relaxing now,
May lean and mark, with thoughts far elsewhere, how
The bowsprit weaves great circles on the sky—
Down sinks the deck with all its life—up fly
The wide horizon and dark Ocean's plain;
And then the buoyant deck ascends again:
While speeding after, ever and anon,
A huge blue watery hill comes roaring on,
Tiger-like, open-mouthed, in furious chase;
But near the flying stern with slackened pace,
And lowered crest, seems first disposed to see
What the strange winged Leviathan may be
That dares amid these boisterous brawlers stray;
And, fearful the encounter to essay,
Falls back in a broad burst of foam, and hissing slinks away.

V.

No lack of change each feeling to employ!
How his eyes widened with a solemn joy
When on some witching night
The jutting corner of the gibbous Moon—
A golden buoy
That weltered in a sable sea of cloud
(One level mass extending wide,
The firmament all bare beside)—
Shed an obscure and ominous light,
And fitful gusts scarce dared to moan aloud!
How was the heart-leap of his exultation
Sustained—sublimed by thrilled imagination
When, if a storm came veiling all the noon,
Old Ocean, rising in gigantic play,
Marshalled his multitudinous array
Of waves tumultuous into ridges gray,
And sent them whirling on their headlong way,
Host after host of crested cavalry
Charging in lines illimitable (urged
By trumpet winds whose deafening bray
Drowned the sharp hiss of myriad-lancing spray)
Into the horrible white gloom profound
That gathered, thickened all around!
And when the dimness of the squall was gone,
Haply, to some far region bound,
The great whale went majestically by—
Plunging along his mighty course alone,
Into the watery waste unknown;
Cleaving with calm, deliberate speed,
The battling waves he would not heed;
While at long intervals upthrown
Successive jets of spouted brine,
Decreasing with the distance, in a line,
Told how he ne'er diverged
An instant from his haughty path
Into the black heart of the tempest's wrath
That like dense smoke before him scowled,
For all the clamorous coil of winds that howled
And waves that leapt around him as he past
And flung his foamy banner to the blast.

VI.

Two scraps of boyish letters here may be
Thrown in, as roughly written home from sea.
“A noble sport—and my delight
That reefing topsails! just to make all right,
Ere the wind freshens to a gale at night.
See! clambering nimbly up the shrouds,
Go, thick as bees, the sailor-crowds;
The smartest for the post of honour vie
That weather yardarm pointing to the sky:
They gather at the topmast-head
And dark against the darkling cloud
Sidling along the foot-ropes spread:
Dim figures o'er the yardarm bowed,
How with the furious Sail, a glorious sight,
Up in the darkness of the Sky they fight!
While by the fierce encounter troubled
The heavy pitching of the Ship is doubled;
The big Sail's swelling, surging volumes, full
Of wind, the strong reef-tackle half restrains;
And like some lasso-tangled bull
Checked in its mid career of savage might
O'er far La Plata's plains,
It raves and tugs and plunges to get free
And flaps and bellows in its agony!
But slowly yielding to its scarce-seen foes
Faint and more faint its frenzied struggling grows;
Till, by its frantic rage at length
Exhausted, like that desert-ranger's strength,
Silent and still, it seems to shrink and close.
Then, tight comprest, the reef-points firmly tied,
Down to the deck again the sailors glide;
And easier now, with calm concentred force,
The Ship bounds forward on her lightened course.”

VII.

But with these Ocean-scenes the Sea-boy fed
On others fruitful both for heart and head;
Had glimpses of strange lands and men as strange;
Saw with each clime their minds and manners change:
Learnt how on God by various names they call,
While God's great smile shines equally on all;
Allah, unimaged, One; Brahma, Vishnu,
And Siva—triple-imaged One in Three;
Ormusd—‘Ahuramasda’—name profound—
‘Living I Am’—that Splendour! One of Two
At war—dark Ahriman his throne invading,
Piercing with Evil first the shell so sound,
His cosmic Egg-of-Order's perfect round;—
Manitou, mistlike with-his pipewhiff fading;—
Buddha—prince, mystic, moralist—at last
Made God for teaching that no God can be:—
Arab—Hindu—Red Indian—Jew—Parsee;
Chinese Joss-beater, little reverent, too—
That cracker-loving creature of the past—
Blithe spirit—soul a lifeless leaden cast;
Who with high-sublimated Gods, a store
(His Buddha—Fo; Confutzee's Tien; Taou
That pure God-Intellect of Lao-tse),
Breathes blinding fog—Convention-fixed of yore—
Of grossest superstition. With the rest,
The necromancing negro of the West,
The terrorist of Obeah. These he scanned;
And many a charm on each delightful land
Lavished by Art's or liberal Nature's hand:
Inhaled the breath that through dense mist distils
From green spruce woods and all the sea-air fills
With sweet sour odours from Canadian hills:
Dwelt with enraptured gaze on Hindostan's
Umbrageous bowers of spice and spreading fans,
And glistening ribbon-leaves and arching plumes;
Her starry palms and sacred peepuls set
On many-fingered roots, a snaky net;
Or propping their high-roofed magnificence
On pendent pillars; clustering gorgeous glooms
Whence bulbous domes of marble mosques and tombs
From that black-green deep-bosoming defence
Swell snow-white into burning atmosphere;
Or gilt pagodas rise above the shade
Like spires of thick cardoon-leaves closely laid,
All in blue tanks reflected, grave and clear.

VIII.

Or else that tropic Isle of Springs entranced
The lad—who revelled in its noonday glare
And silence deep, so tremulously hot—
So gently interrupted when it chanced
A sudden and soft fluttering in the air,
Like silverpaper rumpled, startlingly
Whispered some flying rainbow-fragment nigh
Darting in downy purple golden-shot;
Or, as suspended by its long bill's tip
On viewless wings a-quiver poised to sip
A crimson cactus-bloom—the honied dew
Which from that silky breast, so fit in hue
And texture fine, the airy suckling drew.
Safely that land of merry slaves he saw
Late ruined by a half-completed law;
When thoughtless theorists had flung aside
The evil bonds by ancient Custom tied,
Nor better bonds they wore themselves, supplied;
Had left to tyrannies of grovelling sense
The victims of their vague benevolence;
Left them still basely free from forethought, care,
And loftier loads the self-dependent bear;
Left them untaught to welcome Labour's pains,
More nobly slaves to all a freeman's chains;
To know, the highest freedom all can reach
Is but the highest self-restraint of each;
True freedom a serene and sober thing,
With loyalty to Right crowned inward King;
While laws of Duty made despotic, make
The only freedom mobs nor kings can break.

IX.

So four years passed: to him a happy time.
Meanwhile his brothers both in youthful prime
Had perished; one, the pest of that fair clime,
The demon lurking in its loveliness,
The yellow fever's swiftly-withering flame
Had caught up and consumed: and that distress
Scarce over, from the Storm-Cape tidings came
Doubtful, which soon for doubt left little room,
The other must have met as sharp a doom—
Himself, his ship and shipmates whirled away
In Ocean's wild tempestuous embrace
To some unknown unfathomable Tomb.
Then did the anguish-smitten Father pray
The youngest, last remaining of his race
To leave a calling where such risks were rife,
And live at home, his age's staff and stay.
So, with what grace he might, though grieving sore,
The stripling gave his dutiful consent
Henceforth to follow some pursuit ashore,
Where Death, the Shade that dogs the steps of Life,
Upon his prey though equally intent,
Because less startling, seems less imminent.