Classic Poem

Whenever he would talk to us of ships,
Old schooners lost, or tall ships under weigh,
The god of speech was neighbour to his lips,
A lover's grace on words he loved to say.
He called them by their names, and you could see
Spars in the sun, keels, and their curling foam;
And all his mind was like a morning quay
Of ships gone out, and ships come gladly home.

He filled the bay with sails we had not seen:
The Marguerita L., "a maid for shape,"
The slender Kay, the worthy Island Queen,--
That was his own, he lost her off the Cape,
"She was a ship"--and then he looked away,
And talked to us no more of ships that day.