But avast with the War!  ’Why recall racking
    days
Since set up anew are the slip’s started stays? 
Nor less, though the gale we have left behind,
Well may the heave o’ the sea remind. 
It irks me now, as it troubled me then,
To think o’ the fate in the madness o’ men. 
If Dick was with Farragut on the night-river,
When the boom-chain we burst in the fire-raft’s
    glare,
That blood-dyed the visage as red as the liver;
In the Battle for the Bay too if Dick had a
    share,
And saw one aloft a-piloting the war—­
Trumpet in the whirlwind, a Providence in
    place—­
Our Admiral old whom the captains huzza,
Dick joys in the man nor brags about the race.

But better, wife, I like to booze on the days
Ere the Old Order foundered in these very
    frays,
And tradition was lost and we learned strange
    ways. 
Often I think on the brave cruises then;
Re-sailing them in memory, I hail the press o’
    men
On the gunned promenade where rolling they
    go,
Ere the dog-watch expire and break up the
    show. 
The Laced Caps I see between forward guns;
Away from the powder-room they puff the
    cigar;
“Three days more, hey, the donnas and the
    dons!”
“Your Zeres widow, will you hunt her up,
    Starr?”
The Laced Caps laugh, and the bright waves
    too;
Very jolly, very wicked, both sea and crew,
Nor heaven looks sour on either, I guess,
Nor Pecksniff he bosses the gods’ high mess. 
Wistful ye peer, wife, concerned for my head,
And how best to get me betimes to my bed.

But king o’ the club, the gayest golden spark,
Sailor o’ sailors, what sailor do I mark? 
Tom Tight, Tom Tight, no fine fellow finer,
A cutwater nose, ay, a spirited soul;
But, bowsing away at the well-brewed bowl,
He never bowled back from that last voyage to
    China.

Tom was lieutenant in the brig-o’-war famed
When an officer was hung for an arch-mutineer,
But a mystery cleaved, and the captain was
    blamed,
And a rumpus too raised, though his honor
    it was clear. 
And Tom he would say, when the mousers
    would try him,
And with cup after cup o’ Burgundy ply him: 
“Gentlemen, in vain with your wassail you
    beset,
For the more I tipple, the tighter do I get.” 
No blabber, no, not even with the can—­
True to himself and loyal to his clan.

Tom blessed us starboard and d—­d us larboard,
Right down from rail to the streak o’ the
    garboard. 
Nor less, wife, we liked him.—­Tom was a man
In contrast queer with Chaplain Le Fan,
Who blessed us at morn, and at night yet again,
D—­ning us only in decorous strain;
Preaching ’tween the guns—­each cutlass in its
    place—­
From text that averred old Adam a hard case. 
I see him—­Tom—­on horse-block