And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest;
And a mother she was, and is, to me;
For I was born on the open sea!

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the ocean-child!

I've lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers, a sailor's life,

With wealth to spend and power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,

Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!

Bryan Waller Procter

HOMEWARD BOUND

Head the ship for England!

Shake out every sail!
Blithe leap the billows,

Merry sings the gale.
Captain, work the reckoning;

How many knots a day?—
Round the world and home again,
That's the sailor's way!

We've traded with the Yankees,

Brazilians and Chinese;

We've laughed with dusky beauties
In shade of tall palm-trees;

Across the line and Gulf-Stream

Round by Table Bay— Everywhere and home again,

That's the sailor's way!

Nightly stands the North Star
Higher on our bow;
Straight we run for England;
Our thoughts are in it now.
Jolly times with friends ashore,
When we've drawn our pay!-
All about and home again,

That's the sailor's way!

William Allingham

THE SEA GIPSY

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

There's a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be

Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the Sea.

Richard Hovey

SEA FEVER

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,

And the gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gipsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's

over.

John Masefield

THE VAGABOND

Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,

Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river-
There's the life for a man like me,

There's the life for ever.

Or let autumn fall on me
Where afield I linger,
Silencing the bird on tree,
Biting the blue finger.
White as meal the frosty field—

Warm the fireside haven-
Not to autumn will I yield,
Not to winter even!

Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth around,
And the road before me.
Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,

Nor a friend to know me;

All I ask, the heaven above

And the road below me.

Robert Louis Stevenson

THE JOYS OF THE ROAD

Now the joys of the road are chiefly these:
A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees;

A vagrant's morning wide and blue,
In early fall, when the wind walks, too;

A shadowy highway cool and brown
Alluring up and enticing down

From rippled water to dappled swamp,
From purple glory to scarlet pomp;

The outward eye, the quiet will,
And the striding heart from hill to hill;

The tempter apple over the fence;
The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince;

The palish asters along the wood,-
A lyric touch of the solitude;

An open hand, an easy shoe,

And a hope to make the day go through,—

Another to sleep with, and a third

To wake me up at the voice of a bird;

The resonant far-listening morn,
And the hoarse whisper of the corn;

The crickets mourning their comrades lost,
In the night's retreat from the gathering frost;

(Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill, As they beat on their corselets, valiant still?)

A hunger fit for the kings of the sea,
And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me;

A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword,
And a jug of cider on the board;

An idle noon, a bubbling spring,
The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;

A scrap of gossip at the ferry;

A comrade neither glum nor merry,

Asking nothing, revealing naught,

But minting his words from a fund of thought,