A Pier-Head Chorus

Oh I'll be chewing salted horse and biting flinty bread, And dancing with the stars to watch, upon the fo'c's'le head, Hearkening to the bow-wash and the welter of the tread Of a thousand tons of clipper running free.

For the tug has got the tow-rope and will take us to the Downs, Her paddles churn the river-wrack to muddy greens and browns, And I have given river-wrack and all the filth of towns For the rolling, combing cresters of the sea.

We'll sheet the mizzen-royals home and shimmer down the Bay, The sea-line blue with billows, the land-line blurred and grey; The bow-wash will be piling high and thrashing into spray, As the hooker's fore-foot tramples down the swell.

She'll log a giddy seventeen and rattle out the reel, The weight of all the run-out line will be a thing to feel, As the bacca-quidding shell-back shambles aft to take the wheel, And the sea-sick little middy strikes the bell.