Now the New Year reviving old desires, |
The restless soul to open sea aspires, |
Where the Blue Peter flickers from the fore, |
And the grimed stoker feeds the engine-fires. |
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Coupons, alas, depart with all their rows, |
And last year's sea-met loves where Grindlay knows; |
But still the wild wind wakes off Gardafui, |
And hearts turn eastward with the P. & O's. |
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Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less - |
Oh, slothful mother of much idleness, |
Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed! |
Nay, bear us gently! wherefore need we press? |
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The Tragedy of all our East is laid |
On those white decks beneath the awning shade - |
Birth, absence, longing, laughter, love and tears, |
And death unmaking ere the land is made. |
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And midnight madnesses of souls distraught |
Whom the cool seas call through the open port, |
So that the table lacks one place next morn, |
And for one forenoon men forgo their sport. |
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The shadow of the rigging to and fro |
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And like a giant trampling in his chains, |
The screw-blades gasp and thunder deep below; |
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And, leagued to watch one flying-fish’s wings, |
Heaven stoops to sea, and sea to Heaven clings; |
While, bent upon the ending of his toil, |
The hot sun strides, regarding not these things: |
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For the same wave that meets our stem in spray |
Bore Smith of Asia eastward yesterday, |
And Delhi Jones and Brown of Midnapore |
To-morrow follow on the self-same way. |
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Linked in the chain of Empire one by one, |
Flushed with long leave, or tanned with many a sun, |
The Exiles’ Line brings out the exiles’ line, |
And ships them homeward when their work is done. |
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Yea, heedless of the shuttle through the loom, |
The flying keels fulfil the web of doom. |
Sorrow or shouting - what is that to them? |
Make out the cheque that pays for cabin-room! |
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And how so many score of times ye flit |
With wife and babe and caravan of kit, |
Not all thy travels past shall lower one fare, |
Not all thy tears abate one pound of it. |
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Honour and state, go sink it in the sea, |
Till that great one upon the quarter-deck, |
Brow-bound with gold, shall give thee leave to be. |
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Indeed, indeed from that same line we swear |
Off for all time, and mean it when we swear; |
And then, and then we meet the Quartered Flag, |
And, surely for the last time, pay the fare. |
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And Green of Kensington, estrayed to view |
In three short months the world he never knew, |
Stares with blind eyes upon the Quartered Flag |
And sees no more than yellow, red and blue. |
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But we, the gipsies of the East, but we - |
Waifs of the land and wastrels of the sea - |
Come nearer home beneath the Quartered Flag |
Than ever home shall come to such as we. |
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The camp is struck, the bungalow decays, |
Dead friends and houses desert mark our ways, |
Till sickness send us down to Prince’s Dock |
To meet the changeless use of many days. |
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Bound in the wheel of Empire, one by one, |
The chain-gangs of the East from sire to son, |
The Exiles’ Line takes out the exiles’ line |
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«Dear and slow», |
So much and twice so much. We gird, but go. |
For all the soul of our sad East is there, |
Beneath the house-flag of the P. & O. |