Mike?” my brother growled
A little roughly.  Quoth the fisherman—­
“Mike, Sir? he’s just a fisher lad, no more;
But he can sing, when he takes on to sing,
So loud there’s not a sparrow in the spire
But needs must hear.  Sir, if I might make bold,
I’d ask what song that was you sung.  My mate,
As we were shoving off the mackerel boats,
Said he, ‘I’ll wager that’s the sort o’ song
They kept their hearts up with in the Crimea,’”

“There, fisherman,” quoth I, “he showed his wit,
Your mate; he marked the sound of savage war—­
Gunpowder, groans, hot-shot, and bursting shells,
And ‘murderous messages,’ delivered by
Spent balls that break the heads of dreaming men.”

“Ay, ay, Sir!” quoth the fisherman.  “Have done!”
My brother.  And I—­“The gift belongs to few
Of sending farther than the words can reach
Their spirit and expression;” still—­“Have done!”
He cried; and then “I rolled the rubbish out
More loudly than the meaning warranted,
To air my lungs—­I thought not on the words.”

Then said the fisherman, who missed the point,
“So Mike rolls out the psalm; you’ll hear him, Sir,
Please God you live till Sunday.” 
      “Even so: 
And you, too, fisherman; for here, they say,
You are all church-goers.” 
      “Surely, Sir,” quoth he,
Took off his hat, and stroked his old white head
And wrinkled face; then sitting by us said,
As one that utters with a quiet mind
Unchallenged truth—­“’Tis lucky for the boats.”

The boats! ’tis lucky for the boats!  Our eyes
Were drawn to him as either fain would say,
What! do they send the psalm up in the spire,
And pray because ’tis lucky for the boats?

But he, the brown old man, the wrinkled man,
That all his life had been a church-goer,
Familiar with celestial cadences,
Informed of all he could receive, and sure
Of all he understood—­he sat content,
And we kept silence.  In his reverend face
There was a simpleness we could not sound;
Much truth had passed him overhead; some error
He had trod under foot;—­God comfort him! 
He could not learn of us, for we were young
And he was old, and so we gave it up;
And the sun went into the west, and down
Upon the water stooped an orange cloud,
And the pale milky reaches flushed, as glad
To wear its colors; and the sultry air
Went out to sea, and puffed the sails of ships
With thymy wafts, the breath of trodden grass: 
It took moreover music, for across
The heather belt and over pasture land
Came the sweet monotone of one slow bell,
And parted time into divisions rare,
Whereof each morsel brought its own delight.

“They ring for service,” quoth the fisherman;
“Our parson preaches in the church to-night.”

“And do the people go?” my brother asked.

“Ay, Sir; they count it mean to stay away,
He takes it so to heart.  He’s a rare man,
Our parson; half a head above us all”