Messmates

He gave us all a good-bye cheerily
  At the first dawn of day;
We dropped him down the side full drearily
  When the light died away. 
It’s a dead dark watch that he’s a-keeping there,
And a long, long night that lags a-creeping there,
Where the Trades and the tides roll over him
  And the great ships go by.

He’s there alone with green seas rocking him
  For a thousand miles round;
He’s there alone with dumb things mocking him,
  And we’re homeward bound. 
It’s a long, lone watch that he’s a-keeping there,
And a dead cold night that lags a-creeping there,
While the months and the years roll over him
  And the great ships go by.

I wonder if the tramps come near enough
  As they thrash to and fro,
And the battle-ships’ bells ring clear enough
  To be heard down below;
If through all the lone watch that he’s a-keeping there,
And the long, cold night that lags a-creeping there,
The voices of the sailor-men shall comfort him
  When the great ships go by.

The Death Of Admiral Blake

(August 7th, 1657)

Laden with spoil of the South, fulfilled with the glory of achievement,
  And freshly crowned with never-dying fame,
Sweeping by shores where the names are the names of the victories of England,
  Across the Bay the squadron homeward came.

Proudly they came, but their pride was the pomp of a funeral at midnight,
  When dreader yet the lonely morrow looms;
Few are the words that are spoken, and faces are gaunt beneath the torchlight
  That does but darken more the nodding plumes.

Low on the field of his fame, past hope lay the Admiral triumphant,
  And fain to rest him after all his pain;
Yet for the love that he bore to his own land, ever unforgotten,
  He prayed to see the western hills again.

Fainter than stars in a sky long gray with the coming of the daybreak,
  Or sounds of night that fade when night is done,
So in the death-dawn faded the splendour and loud renown of warfare,
  And life of all its longings kept but one.

“Oh! to be there for an hour when the shade draws in beside the hedgerows,
  And falling apples wake the drowsy noon: 
Oh! for the hour when the elms grow sombre and human in the twilight,
 And gardens dream beneath the rising moon.

“Only to look once more on the land of the memories of childhood,
  Forgetting weary winds and barren foam: 
Only to bid farewell to the combe and the orchard and the moorland,
  And sleep at last among the fields of home!”

So he was silently praying, till now, when his strength was ebbing faster,
  The Lizard lay before them faintly blue;
Now on the gleaming horizon the white cliffs laughed along the coast-line,
  And now the forelands took the shapes they knew.