1911


If you stop to find out what your wages will be
And how they will clothe and feed you,
Willie, my son, don't you go on the Sea.
For the Sea will never need you.

If you ask for the reason of every command,
And argue with people about you,
Willie, my son, don't you go on the Land,
For the Land will do better without you.

If you stop to consider the work you have done
And to boast what your labour is worth, dear,
Angels may come for you, Willie, my son,
But you'll never be wanted on Farth, dear!

You dare to say with perjured lips,
"We fight to make the ocean free"?
You, whose black trail of butchered ships
Bestrews the bed of every sea
Where German submarines have wrought
Their horrors! Have you never thought, --
What you call freedom, men call piracy!

Unnumbered ghosts that haunt the wave
Where you have murdered, cry you down;
And seamen whom you would not save,
Weave now in weed-grown depths a crown
Of shame for your imperious head, --
A dark memorial of the dead, --

Bring the good old bugle, boys! we'll sing another song --
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along --
Sing it as we used to sing it fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia.

"Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the Jubile!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!"
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.

How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound!
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found!

A Thriving Merchant, who no Loss sustained,
In little time a mighty Fortune gain'd.
No Pyrate seiz'd his still returning Freight;
Nor foundring Vessel sunk with its own Weight:
No Ruin enter'd through dissever'd Planks;
No Wreck at Sea, nor in the Publick Banks.
Aloft he sails, above the Reach of Chance,
And do's in Pride, as fast as Wealth, advance.
His Wife too, had her Town and Country-Seat,
And rich in Purse, concludes her Person Great.

A Dutchess wears not so much Gold and Lace;
Then 'tis with Her an undisputed Case,

Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream,
An', taught by time, I tak' it so -- exceptin' always Steam.
From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God --
Predestination in the stride o' yon connectin'-rod.
John Calvin might ha' forged the same -- enorrmous, certain, slow --
Ay, wrought it in the furnace-flame -- ~my~ "Institutio".
I cannot get my sleep to-night; old bones are hard to please;
I'll stand the middle watch up here -- alone wi' God an' these
My engines, after ninety days o' race an' rack an' strain

All day he lay upon the sand
When summer sun was bright,
And let the grains sift through his hand
With infantile delight;
Just like a child, so soft and fair,
Though he was twenty-five -
An innocent, my mother -care
Had kept so long alive.

Oh it is hard to bear a cross
For five-and-twenty years;
A daft son and a husband's loss
Are woes out-weighing tears.
Yet bright and beautiful was he,
Though barely could he walk;
And when he signaled out to sea
His talk was baby talk.

The man I loved was drowned out there

Wake! Amakósa, wake!
And arm yourselves for war.
As coming winds the forest shake,
I hear a sound from far:
It is not thunder in the sky,
Nor lion's roar upon the hill,
But the voice of HIM who sits on high,
And bids me speak his will!

He bids me call you forth,
Bold sons of Káhabee,
To sweep the White Men from the earth,
And drive them to the sea:
The sea, which heaved them up at first,
For Amakósa's curse and bane,
Howls for the progeny she nurst,
To swallow them again.

Hark! 'tis UHLANGA'S voice

You pull over to the shoulder
of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
out, the oaks
dream day and night of rain
that never comes.
At noon or just before noon
the short shadows
are gray and hold what little
life survives.
In the still heat the engine
clicks, although
the real heat is hours ahead.
You get out and step
cautiously over a low wire
fence and begin

Neither clown nor child nor black
nor white but verticle
and a questioning innocence
dressed in night and snow:
The mother smiles at the sailor,
the fisherman at the astronaunt,
but the child child does not smile
when he looks at the bird child,
and from the disorderly ocean
the immaculate passenger
emerges in snowy mourning.

I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings
but hard little oars

Out of the delicate dream of the distance an emerald emerges
Veiled in the violet folds of the air of the sea;
Softly the dream grows awakening -- shimmering white of a city,
Splashes of crimson, the gay bougainvillea, the palms.
High in the infinite blue of its heaven a quiet cloud lingers,
Lost and forgotten of winds that have fallen asleep,
Fallen asleep to the tune of a Portuguese song in a garden.