Classic Poem

THE SHORE-MEN

The night is dark; the morning still is distant;
Silent are the cottages near the cove;
Suddenly a window in a gable is lighted —
Another and another! the village is awake!

One by one the low side-doors are opened
And, like conspirators, dim forms emerge;
It is the fishermen who are early faring
To drop their lines, pull nets, set trawls.

They go silently with slow deliberate motion
Down to the margin of the ebbing tide.
There is a sound of softly-gurgling water
As slips among the pebbles a refluent wave.

Each pushes off his clumsy punt, and rowing
With short quick strokes, as if by instinct sure
Reaches the moorings where the rocking dory
Lies as if eagerly waiting to dart forth.

One pauses and without a thought of baiting
Throws over the red-painted six-pronged hook,
Where in the depths with phosphorescent sparkle
Moves wavering the greedy dragon-squid.

A quick jerk! and with a squush and flopping
Comes squirming up the leathery evil thing
With angry squirt of black and inky fluid,
Small kinsman of the giant devil-fish.

The fresh seabreeze comes ruffling the glassy surface;
Ceases the sound of rhythmically clicking oars;
The thick short mast is stept; the mildewed mainsail,
With whiter patches, the sheet secured, fills out;
The jib, unrolled, catches the gathering impulse.

Taking the middle thwart the man, alert,
Holding the tiller-ropes with skilful action,
Beats up against the wind, the sail close-hauled,
And out, far out the leaning dory bears him!

How can he tell where lie fish-haunted rocks,
When the low shore even from the lifting billow
Can scarcely be distinguished from a cloud?
He has his signs, his marks; he watches
Until a hollow aligns an inland hill
Or some hotel or house a tree eclipses —
You would not know 't was hill or house or tree!

With noisy splash the weighted wooden killock
Goes plunging down with thirty fathoms of rope;
Then the great reels give off their twisted cod-lines,
The keen hooks loaded with the clustering clams
And the well-fastened heavy leaden sinkers.

The man stands watchful, sawing with both hands,
The rough lines cutting channels in the gun wales.
A sudden twitch and, sprinkling the cold brine,
Hand over hand, he pulls the struggling victim.
It may be a splashing cod of forty pounds
Speckled with trout-like spots, or a violet haddock
With monstrous jaws wide-gaping to grasp the hook,
Or a swift gamey sharp-nosed giant pollock,
Or the reputed night-prowler of the seas — the hake,
Perhaps a purple-blue fierce-looking cat-fish,
Or a huge sluggish gray-white halibut.
Among the pile of cobbles used for ballast
The fish are flung and gasping, quivering die!

Meantime the aspect of the ocean changes:
Above the horizon's shifting rim appears
A faint mysterious glow; it widens, brightens,
And like a flame the moon's thin scimetar,
Distorted, tall and weird, climbs up the sky;
The multitudinous waves that build the billows
Are gilded by its pallid golden light.

But soon the Old Moon and her star-attendant
And all the morning constellations fade.
A streak of vivid pink begins to broaden;
The clouds take myriad contrasting hues;
The great dark curling menacing billows
Become alive with gleams like changeable silk;
And then the Sun's round face o'erpeers the horizon —
Glory to God! he brings the gracious day!

Down near the lighthouse on the foam-fringed Nubble,
Like screaming children just let loose from school,
Circle the clamoring terns above some booty;
From all directions others speed with flight
Ludicrous for its headlong obstinacy.
Far in the offing spouts a playful whale;

A phalanx of porpoises with round backs passes;
The puh! puh! of a distant motor-boat
Comes swiftly nearer; it exchanges greeting
And over the salt hills hastens to the shore.

The fisherman now with his finny haul contented
Pulls up the killock and rows off to the buoys
Which with the taut-stretched trawls are nodding, dancing.

Ah! but what robber has been here at work?
It is the fierce horde of voracious dogfish
Who snap the mackerel from the swinging hooks.
Leaving the mangled heads to tell the story
Of hours of precious labor gone to waste.

If chance of sudden squall overturn the dory,
And for the surf-swept rocks the man must swim,
Like ravening wolves these keen sharks rend him
And in an instant the green wave is red!

THE BANKS MEN

F ORTH from your beautiful sheltered harbors,
Bucksport, New Bedford, Gloucester, Province-town,
Gallantly riding the long ocean ridges,
Sail full-equipt the white-winged fishing-fleet.

Each of the sharp-cut, graceful-built schooners
Bearing away to the fog-haunted Banks
Carries its crew of twelve or of twenty
Hardy, good-tempered, courageous, alert.
Storms will sweep down on them, drive them and wreck them,
Some of the men will be lost in the boats,
Drifting for hours with the scud flying round them,
Swampt by the crash of a huge curling wave.

Women of Gloucester, wives of brave seamen,
How can ye bear the sight of the sea,
Knowing that sooner or later your husbands
Surely will pay the tribute it wreaks?
Yet must the city be fed by their faring,
Never will men weakly fear for their lives;
They will go forth in their vigorous manhood
Doing their lifework till the last call is heard.

Out on the Banks tall icebergs are drifting,
Lifting on high their crystalline spires;
Treacherous beauty and Frost's deadly vapor
Girdle them round; they roll and they crash.
See! from the schooner the great boats are lowered;
Clad in their oilskins the fishermen strive,
Emulous-eager to get first to the fishing-grounds.
Far on the horizon with pearl-tinted wall
Stretches the Fog, their redoubtable enemy.
While they are busy in pulling the lines,
Suddenly, swiftly, like clouds of gray horsemen
Swoops the dread vapor and wraps them in night.

Back to the city with barrels of codfish
Salted, fat halibut frozen in layers,
Thousands of mackerel, luckily-netted,
Sails the deep schooner; but lo! on the mast
Midway the halliards, sign of disaster,
Mournfully floats the storm-tattered flag.
Then as the vessel, reeking of fish-oil,
Noisy with bustle, warps into her berth,
Spreads the sad news; in the journals a paragraph —
" Lost in the fog, cut down by a liner,
Perished a boatload of Provincetown fishermen. "
We who read of it quickly forget it.
Ah! but the homes where the young widows mourn,
Where the young children their fathers will weep for!

Nevertheless all the length of our coast,
Even from the desolate ice-mantled Labrador,
Up and down the sea-like Saint Lawrence,
From every cove on the crag-bastioned New-foundland,
Out of the spruce-bordered inlets of Maine,
(Eastport's gray haven where the tide falling
Leaves the lank wharves suspended in air;
Calais, Mount Desert whose hills nest the white mist-wraiths;
Deer Isle whose captains have circled the world
Sailing trim yachts for the winning of prizes;
Portland, Queen of the many-isled Bay;
Kittery echoing the strokes of great hammers,
War's guarded post, yet the mother of peace),
Out of the mouths of the swift-swirling rivers,
Portsmouth's Piscataqua, Newbury's Merrimac;
(Not alone Gloucester where earliest flourished,
Still holding its banner, this venturesome industry),
Out from the bays, Delaware, Chesapeake,
Chincoteague, Albemarle, numberless-named,
Where in the spring the shad seek the rivers;
Forth from hamlets perched on the Keys,
Lone on thy sounds and bayous, Alabama,
Casting the net in the Gulf for the mullet,
Sweeping the Lakes where the white-fish grow scarce,
Facing the swells of the gale-swept Pacific,
Careless of dangers, heedless of death,
Hundreds of thousands of brawny-armed sailors,
Sun-tanned, storm-hardened, honest, keen-eyed,
Live on the waters that bound and adorn us,
Feeding the hosts of the children of men.

So when ye pass the city's great markets,
Pause for a space at the fishermen's stalls,
Where half-buried in glittering ice lie
Rigid in rows, with their glassy eyes staring,
Wide mouths gaping as if in surprise,
Brilliantly-colored with green and vermilion,
Yellow or spotted with stripes or with bars,
Fishes of all the varied sea-families,
Snatched from their homes in the depths of the waters;
Then oh remember the labor involved,
The infinite perils, the heart-pangs of partings —
Pause, breathe a prayer for those men and pass on!