Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/211

Rh

'Was it storm? Our fathers faced it, and a wilder never blew; Earth that waited for the wreckage watched the galley struggle through. Burning noon or choking midnight, sickness, sorrow, parting, death? Nay, our very babes would mock you had they time for idle breath. ...

'Yet they talk of times and seasons and of woe the years bring forth, Of our galley swamped and shattered in the rollers of the North. When the niggers break the hatches and the decks are gay with gore, And a craven-hearted pilot crams her crashing on the shore.

'She will need no half-mast signal, minute-gun, or rocket-flare; When the cry for help goes seaward, she will find her servants there. Battered chain-gangs of the orlop, grizzled drafts of years gone by, To the bench that broke their manhood they shall lash themselves and die.

'Hale and crippled, young and aged, paid, deserted, shipped away— Palace, cot, and lazaretto shall make up the tale that day, When the skies are black above them and the decks ablaze beneath, And the top-men clear the raffle with their clasp-knives in their teeth.'

The two finest lines here, the first couplet of the fifth verse, are followed by two that are feeble beyond expression, and make one doubt of everything; yet