A hailing fount of fire is struck at every squashing blow, The leathern mail rebounds the hail, the rattling cinders strew The ground around; at every bound the sweltering fountains flow, And thick and loud the swinking crowd at every stroke pant "Ho!" Leap out, leap out, my masters, leap out, and lay on load! Let's forge a goodly anchor;-a bower thick and broad; For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode, And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road, The low reef roaring on her lee, the roll of ocean poured From stem to stern, sea after sea; the mainmast by the board; The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the chains! But courage still, brave mariners! the bower yet remains, And not an inch to flinch he deigns, save when ye pitch sky high; Then moves his head, as though he said, "Fear nothing - here am I." Swing in your strokes in order, let foot and hand keep time: Your blows make music sweeter far than any steeple's chime. But while you sling your sledges, sing, and let the burthen be, The anchor is the anvil king, and royal craftsmen we! Strike in, strike in the sparks be gin to dull their rustling red; Our hammers ring with sharper din, our work will soon be sped. Our anchor soon must change his bed of fiery rich array, For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay; Our anchor soon must change the lay of merry craftsmen here, For the yeo-heave-o', and the heaveaway, and the sighing seaman's cheer; When, weighing slow, at eve they go - far, far from love and home; And sobbing sweethearts, in a row, wail o'er the ocean foam. In livid and obdurate gloom he darkens down at last; A shapely one he is, and strong, as e'er from cat was cast. O trusted and trustworthy guard, if thou hadst life like me, What pleasures would thy toils reward beneath the deep green sea! O deep sea-diver, who might then behold such sights as thou? The hoary monster's palaces! methinks what joy 'twere now To go plumb plunging down amid the assembly of the whales, And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails! Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea-unicorn, And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn; To leave the subtile sworder-fish of bony blade forlorn; And for the ghastly-grinning shark to laugh his jaws to scorn; To leap down on the kraken's back, where 'mid Norwegian isles He lies, a lubber anchorage for sudden shallowed miles; Till snorting, like an under-sea volcano, off he rolls; Meanwhile to swing, a-buffeting the far astonished shoals Of his back-browsing ocean-calves; or, haply in a cove, Shell-strewn, and consecrate of old to some Undine's love, To find the long-haired maidens; or, hard by icy lands, To wrestle with the sea-serpent, upon cerulean sands. O broad-armed fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal thine? The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons, that tugs thy cable line; And night by night, 'tis thy delight, thy glory day by day, Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play, But shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave, A fisher's joy is to destroy, - thine office is to save. |
