Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers,
Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers
Umbria, Etruria, noble, still at sea,
The grandest, then, that man had brought to be
Majestic, City of Paris, City of Rome,
Forever jealous racers, out and home.
The Alfred Holt’s blue smokestacks down the stream,
The fair Arabian with her bows a-cream.
Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners,
The marks and styles of countless ship designers.
The Magdalena, Puno, Potosi,
Lost Cotopaxi, all well known to me.
These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory,
Her memory of old song or comrade’s story,
Still in my mind the image of life’s need,
Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed.
“They built great ships and sailed them” sounds most brave,
Whatever arts we have or fail to have;
I touch my country’s mind, I come to grips
With half her purpose thinking of these ships.
That art untouched by softness, all that line
Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine;
That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty
Born of a manly life and bitter duty;
That splendour of fine bows which yet could stand
The shock of rollers never checked by land.
That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,
Yet stayed to strength, and back-stayed into rake,
The life demanded by that art, the keen
Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean,
They are grander things than all the art of towns,
Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns.
They are my country’s line, her great art done
By strong brains labouring on the thought unwon,
They mark our passage as a race of men,
Earth will not see such ships as those agen.
SONNET ON THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE
(From the Portuguese of Antonio di Ferreiro)
That blessed sunlight, that once showed to me
My way to heaven more plain, more certainly,
And with her bright beams banished utterly
All trace of mortal sorrow far from me,
Has gone from me, has left her prison sad,
And I am blind and alone and gone astray,
Like a lost pilgrim on a desert way
Wanting the blessed guide that once he had.
Thus with a spirit bowed and mind a blur
I trace the holy steps where she has gone
By valleys and by meadows and by mountains,
And everywhere I catch a glimpse of her,
She takes me by the hand and leads me on,
And my eyes follow her, my eyes made fountains.
THEY CLOSED HER EYES
(From the Spanish of Don Gustavo A. Becquér)
They closed her eyes,
They were still open;
They hid her face
With a white linen,
And some sobbing,
Others in silence,
From the sad bedroom
All came away.
The nightlight in a dish
Burned on the floor;
It threw on the wall
The bed’s shadow,
And in that shadow
One saw some times
Drawn in sharp line
The body’s shape.
The dawn appeared.
At its first whiteness,
With its thousand noises,
The town awoke.
Before that contrast
Of light and darkness,
Of life and strangeness,
I thought a moment.
My God, how lonely
The dead are!