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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538363" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Child and the Mariner</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A dear old couple my grandparents were, <br>And kind to all dumb things; they saw in Heaven <br>The lamb that Jesus petted when a child; <br>Their faith was never draped by Doubt: to them <br>Death was a rainbow in Eternity, <br>That promised everlasting brightness soon. <br>An old seafaring man was he; a rough <br>Old man, but kind; and hairy, like the nut <br>Full of sweet milk. All day on shore he watched <br>The winds for sailors' wives, and told what ships <br>Enjoyed fair weather, and what ships had storms; <br>He watched the sky, and he could tell for sure <br>What afternoons would follow stormy morns, <br>If quiet nights would end wild afternoons. <br>He leapt away from scandal with a roar, <br>And if a whisper still possessed his mind, <br>He walked about and cursed it for a plague. <br>He took offence at Heaven when beggars passed, <br>And sternly called them back to give them help. <br>In this old captain's house I lived, and things <br>That house contained were in ships' cabins once: <br>Sea-shells and charts and pebbles, model ships; <br>Green weeds, dried fishes stuffed, and coral stalks; <br>Old wooden trunks with handles of spliced rope, <br>With copper saucers full of monies strange, <br>That seemed the savings of dead men, not touched <br>To keep them warm since their real owners died; <br>Strings of red beads, methought were dipped in blood, <br>And swinging lamps, as though the house might move; <br>An ivory lighthouse built on ivory rocks, <br>The bones of fishes and three bottled ships. <br>And many a thing was there which sailors make <br>In idle hours, when on long voyages, <br>Of marvellous patience, to no lovely end. <br>And on those charts I saw the small black dots <br>That were called islands, and I knew they had <br>Turtles and palms, and pirates' buried gold. <br>There came a stranger to my granddad's house, <br>The old man's nephew, a seafarer too; <br>A big, strong able man who could have walked <br>Twm Barlum's hill all clad in iron mail <br>So strong he could have made one man his club <br>To knock down others -- Henry was his name, <br>No other name was uttered by his kin. <br>And here he was, sooth illclad, but oh, <br>Thought I, what secrets of the sea are his! <br>This man knows coral islands in the sea, <br>And dusky girls heartbroken for white men; <br>More rich than Spain, when the Phoenicians shipped <br>Silver for common ballast, and they saw <br>Horses at silver mangers eating grain; <br>This man has seen the wind blow up a mermaid's hair <br>Which, like a golden serpent, reared and stretched <br>To feel the air away beyond her head. <br>He begged my pennies, which I gave with joy -- <br>He will most certainly return some time <br>A self-made king of some new land, and rich. <br>Alas that he, the hero of my dreams, <br>Should be his people's scorn; for they had rose <br>To proud command of ships, whilst he had toiled <br>Before the mast for years, and well content; <br>Him they despised, and only Death could bring <br>A likeness in his face to show like them. <br>For he drank all his pay, nor went to sea <br>As long as ale was easy got on shore. <br>Now, in his last long voyage he had sailed <br>From Plymouth Sound to where sweet odours fan <br>The Cingalese at work, and then back home -- <br>But came not near my kin till pay was spent. <br>He was not old, yet seemed so; for his face <br>Looked like the drowned man's in the morgue, when it <br>Has struck the wooden wharves and keels of ships. <br>And all his flesh was pricked with Indian ink, <br>His body marked as rare and delicate <br>As dead men struck by lightning under trees <br>And pictured with fine twigs and curlèd ferns; <br>Chains on his neck and anchors on his arms; <br>Rings on his fingers, bracelets on his wrist; <br>And on his breast the Jane of Appledore <br>Was schooner rigged, and in full sail at sea. <br>He could not whisper with his strong hoarse voice, <br>No more than could a horse creep quietly; <br>He laughed to scorn the men that muffled close <br>For fear of wind, till all their neck was hid, <br>Like Indian corn wrapped up in long green leaves; <br>He knew no flowers but seaweeds brown and green, <br>He knew no birds but those that followed ships. <br>Full well he knew the water-world; he heard <br>A grander music there than we on land, <br>When organ shakes a church; swore he would make <br>The sea his home, though it was always roused <br>By such wild storms as never leave Cape Horn; <br>Happy to hear the tempest grunt and squeal <br>Like pigs heard dying in a slaughterhouse. <br>A true-born mariner, and this his hope -- <br>His coffin would be what his cradle was, <br>A boat to drown in and be sunk at sea; <br>Salted and iced in Neptune's larder deep. <br>This man despised small coasters, fishing-smacks; <br>He scorned those sailors who at night and morn <br>Can see the coast, when in their little boats <br>They go a six days' voyage and are back <br>Home with their wives for every Sabbath day. <br>Much did he talk of tankards of old beer, <br>And bottled stuff he drank in other lands, <br>Which was a liquid fire like Hell to gulp, <br>But Paradise to sip. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so he talked; <br>Nor did those people listen with more awe <br>To Lazurus -- whom they had seen stone dead -- <br>Than did we urchins to that seaman's voice. <br>He many a tale of wonder told: of where, <br>At Argostoli, Cephalonia's sea <br>Ran over the earth's lip in heavy floods; <br>And then again of how the strange Chinese <br>Conversed much as our homely Blackbirds sing. <br>He told us how he sailed in one old ship <br>Near that volcano Martinique, whose power <br>Shook like dry leaves the whole Caribbean seas; <br>And made the sun set in a sea of fire <br>Which only half was his; and dust was thick <br>On deck, and stones were pelted at the mast. <br>Into my greedy ears such words that sleep <br>Stood at my pillow half the night perplexed. <br>He told how isles sprang up and sank again, <br>Between short voyages, to his amaze; <br>How they did come and go, and cheated charts; <br>Told how a crew was cursed when one man killed <br>A bird that perched upon a moving barque; <br>And how the sea's sharp needles, firm and strong, <br>Ripped open the bellies of big, iron ships; <br>Of mighty icebergs in the Northern seas, <br>That haunt the far hirizon like white ghosts. <br>He told of waves that lift a ship so high <br>That birds could pass from starboard unto port <br>Under her dripping keel. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, it was sweet <br>To hear that seaman tell such wondrous tales: <br>How deep the sea in parts, that drownèd men <br>Must go a long way to their graves and sink <br>Day after day, and wander with the tides. <br>He spake of his own deeds; of how he sailed <br>One summer's night along the Bosphorus, <br>And he -- who knew no music like the wash <br>Of waves against a ship, or wind in shrouds -- <br>Heard then the music on that woody shore <br>Of nightingales,and feared to leave the deck, <br>He thought 'twas sailing into Paradise. <br>To hear these stories all we urchins placed <br>Our pennies in that seaman's ready hand; <br>Until one morn he signed on for a long cruise, <br>And sailed away -- we never saw him more. <br>Could such a man sink in the sea unknown? <br>Nay, he had found a land with something rich, <br>That kept his eyes turned inland for his life. <br>'A damn bad sailor and a landshark too, <br>No good in port or out' -- my granddad said.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Henry+Davies">William Henry Davies</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538363" data-title="The Child and the Mariner de William Henry Davies" data-description="A dear old couple my grandparents were, 
And kind to all dumb things; they saw in Heaven 
The lamb that Jesus petted when a child; 
Their faith was never draped by Doubt: to them 
Death was a rainbow in Eternity, 
That promised everlasting brightn..."></div>
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