Page:Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918.djvu/49

Rh 14

It is even seen, time's something server,

In mankind's medley a duty-swerver,

At downright 'No or yes?'

Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.

15

Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred,

(Low lie his mates now on watery bed)

Takes to the seas and snows

As sheer down the ship goes.

16

Now her afterdraught gullies him too down;

Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown;

Till a lifebelt and God's will

Lend him a lift from the sea-swill.

17

Now he shoots short up to the round air;

Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere;

But his eye no cliff, no coast or

Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.

18

Him, after an hour of wintry waves,

A schooner sights, with another, and saves,

And he boards her in Oh! such joy

He has lost count what came next, poor boy.—

19

They say who saw one sea-corpse cold

He was all of lovely manly mould,

Every inch a tar,

Of the best we boast our sailors are.