Ay, sweeter is manhood, though rough, than the smoothest effeminate charms
To the old sea-king strain in our blood in the season of shocks and alarms,
When the winds and the waves and the rocks make a chaos of danger and strife;
And the need of the moment is pluck, and the guerdon of valour is life.
That guerdon you've snatched from the teeth of the thundering tiger-maw'd waves,
And the valour that smites is as naught, after all, to the valour that saves.
They are safe on the shore, who had sunk in the whirl of the floods but for you!
And some said you had lost your old grit and devotion! We knew 'twas not true.
The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would not dare,
The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share,