The Story Of A Round-House And Other Poems Part 12

Royals. Light upper square sails; the fourth, fifth, or sixth sails from the deck according to the mast's rig.

Sail-room. A large room or compartment in which the s.h.i.+p's sails are stored.

"Sails." The sailmaker is meant.

Scuttle-b.u.t.t. A cask containing fresh water.

Shackles. Rope handles for a sea-chest.

Sheet-blocks. Iron blocks, by means of which sails are sheeted home.

In any violent wind they beat upon the mast with great rapidity and force.

Sheets. Ropes or chains which extend the lower corners of square sails in the operation of sheeting home.

s.h.i.+fting suits (of sails). The operation of removing a s.h.i.+p's sails, and replacing them with others.

Shrouds. Wire ropes of great strength, which support lateral strains on masts.

Shroud-screws. Iron contrivances by which shrouds are hove taut.

Sidelights. A sailing s.h.i.+p carries two of these between sunset and sunrise: one green, to starboard; one red, to port.

Sights. Observations to help in the finding of a s.h.i.+p's position.

Skid. A wooden contrivance on which s.h.i.+p's boats rest.

Skysails. The uppermost square sails; the fifth, sixth, or seventh sails from the deck according to the mast's rig.

Slatting. The noise made by sails flogging in the wind.

Slush. Grease, melted fat.

South-wester. A kind of oilskin hat. A gale from the south-west.

Spit brown. To chew tobacco.

Square sennit. A cunning plait which makes a four-square bar.

Staysails. Fore and aft sails set upon the stays between the masts.

Stow. To furl.

Strop (the, putting on). A strop is a grument or rope ring. The two players kneel down facing each other, the strop is placed over their heads, and the men then try to pull each other over by the strength of their neck-muscles.

Swing ports. Iron doors in the s.h.i.+p's side which open outwards to free the decks from water.

Tackle (p.r.o.nounced "taykel"). Blocks, ropes, pulleys, etc.

Take a caulk. To sleep upon the deck.

Topsails. The second and third sails from the deck on the masts of a modern square-rigged s.h.i.+p are known as the lower and upper topsails.

Trucks. The summits of the masts.

Upper topsail. The third square sail from the deck on the masts of square-rigged s.h.i.+ps.

Yards. The steel or wooden spars (placed across masts) from which square sails are set.

BIOGRAPHY

When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts, And long before this wandering flesh is rotten The dates which made me will be all forgotten; And none will know the gleam there used to be About the feast days freshly kept by me, But men will call the golden hour of bliss "About this time," or "shortly after this."

Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb Those glittering steps, those milestones upon Time, Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth, Those moments of the soul in years of earth They mark the height achieved, the main result, The power of freedom in the perished cult, The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds, Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.

By many waters and on many ways I have known golden instants and bright days; The day on which, beneath an arching sail, I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail; The summer day on which in heart's delight I saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white, The glittering day when all the waves wore flags And the s.h.i.+p _Wanderer_ came with sails in rags; That curlew-calling time in Irish dusk When life became more splendid than its husk, When the rent chapel on the brae at Slains Shone with a doorway opening beyond brains; The dawn when, with a brace-block's creaking cry, Out of the mist a little barque slipped by, Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red, Then gone, with one raised hand and one turned head; The howling evening when the spindrift's mists Broke to display the four Evangelists, Snow-capped, divinely granite, lashed by breakers, Wind-beaten bones of long since buried acres; The night alone near water when I heard All the sea's spirit spoken by a bird; The English dusk when I beheld once more (With eyes so changed) the s.h.i.+p, the citied sh.o.r.e, The lines of masts, the streets so cheerly trod (In happier seasons) and gave thanks to G.o.d.

All had their beauty, then bright moments' gift, Their something caught from Time, the ever-swift.

All of those gleams were golden; but life's hands Have given more constant gifts in changing lands, And when I count those gifts, I think them such As no man's bounty could have bettered much: The gift of country life, near hills and woods Where happy waters sing in solitudes, The gift of being near s.h.i.+ps, of seeing each day A city of s.h.i.+ps with great s.h.i.+ps under weigh, The great street paved with water, filled with s.h.i.+pping, And all the world's flags flying and seagulls dipping.

Yet when I am dust my penman may not know Those water-trampling s.h.i.+ps which made me glow, But think my wonder mad and fail to find Their glory, even dimly, from my mind, And yet they made me: not alone the s.h.i.+ps But men hard-palmed from tallying-on to whips, The two close friends of nearly twenty years, Sea-followers both, sea-wrestlers and sea-peers, Whose feet with mine wore many a bolt-head bright Treading the decks beneath the riding light.

Yet death will make that warmth of friends.h.i.+p cold And who'll know what one said and what one told Our hearts' communion and the broken spells When the loud call blew at the strike of bells?

No one, I know, yet let me be believed A soul entirely known is life achieved.

Years blank with hards.h.i.+p never speak a word Live in the soul to make the being stirred, Towns can be prisons where the spirit dulls Away from mates and ocean-wandering hulls, Away from all bright water and great hills And sheep-walks where the curlews cry their fills, Away in towns, where eyes have nought to see But dead museums and miles of misery And floating life unrooted from man's need And miles of fish-hooks baited to catch greed And life made wretched out of human ken And miles of shopping women served by men.

So, if the penman sums my London days Let him but say that there were holy ways, Dull Bloomsbury streets of dull brick mansions old With stinking doors where women stood to scold And drunken waits at Christmas with their horn Droning the news, in snow, that Christ was born; And windy gas lamps and the wet roads s.h.i.+ning And that old carol of the midnight whining, And that old room (above the noisy slum) Where there was wine and fire and talk with some Under strange pictures of the wakened soul To whom this earth was but a burnt-out coal.

O Time, bring back those midnights and those friends, Those glittering moments that a spirit lends That all may be imagined from the flash The cloud-hid G.o.d-game through the lightning gash Those hours of stricken sparks from which men took Light to send out to men in song or book.

Those friends who heard St. Pancras' bells strike two Yet stayed until the barber's c.o.c.kerel crew.

Talking of n.o.ble styles, the Frenchman's best, The thought beyond great poets not expressed, The glory of mood where human frailty failed, The forts of human light not yet a.s.sailed, Till the dim room had mind and seemed to brood Binding our wills to mental brotherhood, Till we became a college, and each night Was discipline and manhood and delight, Till our farewells and winding down the stairs At each grey dawn had meaning that Time spares, That we, so linked, should roam the whole world round Teaching the ways our brooding minds had found Making that room our Chapter, our one mind Where all that this world soiled should be refined.

Often at night I tread those streets again And see the alley glimmering in the rain, Yet now I miss that sign of earlier tramps A house with shadows of plane-boughs under lamps, The secret house where once a beggar stood Trembling and blind to show his woe for food.

And now I miss that friend who used to walk Home to my lodgings with me, deep in talk, Wearing the last of night out in still streets Trodden by us and policemen on their beats And cats, but else deserted; now I miss That lively mind and guttural laugh of his And that strange way he had of making gleam, Like something real, the art we used to dream.

London has been my prison; but my books Hills and great waters, labouring men and brooks, s.h.i.+ps and deep friends.h.i.+ps and remembered days Which even now set all my mind ablaze As that June day when, in the red bricks' c.h.i.n.ks I saw the old Roman ruins white with pinks And felt the hillside haunted even then By not dead memory of the Roman men.

And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen Who knew the interest in me and were keen That man alive should understand man dead So many centuries since the blood was shed.

And quickened with strange hush because this comer Sensed a strange soul alive behind the summer.

That other day on Ercall when the stones Were sunbleached white, like long unburied bones, While the bees droned and all the air was sweet From honey buried underneath my feet, Honey of purple heather and white clover Sealed in its gummy bags till summer's over.

Then other days by water, by bright sea, Clear as clean gla.s.s and my bright friend with me, The cove clean bottomed where we saw the brown Red spotted plaice go skimming six feet down And saw the long fronds waving, white with sh.e.l.ls, Waving, unfolding, drooping, to the swells; That sadder day when we beheld the great And terrible beauty of a Lammas spate Roaring white-mouthed in all the great cliff's gaps Headlong, tree-tumbling fury of collapse, While drenching clouds drove by and every sense Was water roaring or rus.h.i.+ng or in offence, And mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamed Where torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed.

That sadder day when we beheld again A spate going down in suns.h.i.+ne after rain, When the blue reach of water leaping bright Was one long ripple and clatter, flecked with white.

And that far day, that never blotted page When youth was bright like flowers about old age Fair generations bringing thanks for life To that old kindly man and trembling wife After their sixty years: Time never made A better beauty since the Earth was laid Than that thanksgiving given to grey hair For the great gift of life which brought them there.

Days of endeavour have been good: the days Racing in cutters for the comrade's praise, The day they led my cutter at the turn Yet could not keep the lead and dropped astern, The moment in the spurt when both boats' oars Dipped in each other's wash and throats grew hoa.r.s.e And teeth ground into teeth and both strokes quickened Las.h.i.+ng the sea, and gasps came, and hearts sickened And c.o.xswains d.a.m.ned us, dancing, banking stroke, To put our weights on, though our hearts were broke And both boats seemed to stick and sea seemed glue, The tide a mill race we were struggling through And every quick recover gave us squints Of them still there, and oar tossed water-glints And cheering came, our friends, our foemen cheering, A long, wild, rallying murmur on the hearing-- "Port Fore!" and "Starboard Fore!"

"Port Fore." "Port Fore."

"Up with her, Starboard," and at that each oar Lightened, though arms were bursting, and eyes shut And the oak stretchers grunted in the strut And the curse quickened from the c.o.x, our bows Crashed, and drove talking water, we made vows Chast.i.ty vows and temperance; in our pain We numbered things we'd never eat again If we could only win; then came the yell "Starboard," "Port Fore," and then a beaten bell Rung as for fire to cheer us. "Now." Oars bent Soul took the looms now body's bolt was spent, "d.a.m.n it, come on now," "On now," "On now," "Starboard."

"Port Fore." "Up with her, Port"; each cutter harboured Ten eye-shut painsick stragglers, "Heave, oh, heave,"