Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/325

 ABOUT ALL KINDS OF SHIPS

And this :

��And this :

��A wet sheet and a flowing sea, And a wind that follows fair.

��My foot is on my gallant deck Once more the rover is free!

��And the &quot; Larboard Watch&quot; the person referred to below is at the masthead, or somewhere up there :

Oh, who can tell what joy he feels, As o er the foam his vessel reels, And his tired eyelids slumb ring fall, He rouses at the welcome call

Of &quot;Larboard watch ahoy!&quot;

Yes, and there was forever and always some jackass- voiced person braying out:

Rocked in the cradle of the deep, I lay me down in peace to sleep!

Other favorites had these suggestive titles: &quot;The Storm at Sea&quot;; &quot;The Bird at Sea&quot;; &quot;The Sailor Boy s Dream&quot;; &quot;The Captive Pirate s Lament&quot;; We are far from Home on the Stormy Main and so on, and so on, the list is endless. Everybody on a farm lived chiefly amid the dangers of the deep in those days, in fancy.

But all that is gone now. Not a vestige of it is left. The iron-clad, with her unsentimental aspect and frigid attention to business, banished romance from the war marine, and the unsentimental steamer has banished it from the commercial marine. The

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