| |
| COME, all you sailors of the southern waters, | |
| You apparitions of the Spanish main, | |
| Who dyed the jewelled depths blood-red with slaughters, | |
| You things of crime and gain! | |
| |
| Come, caravel and pinnace, on whose daring | 5 |
| Rose the low purple of a new world’s shore; | |
| Come from your dreams of desperate sea-faring | |
| And sun your sails once more. | |
| |
| Build up again your stately height, storm-harried | |
| Santa Maria, crusted with salt stains; | 10 |
| Come quick, you black and treacherous craft that carried | |
| Columbus home in chains! | |
| |
| And out of all your angry flames and flashes, | |
| Proud with a pride that only homeward yearned, | |
| Swim darkly up and gather from your ashes, | 15 |
| You ships that Cortes burned! | |
| |
| Come, prows, whence climbing into light deific | |
| Undazzled Balboa planted o’er the plain, | |
| The lonely plain of the unguessed Pacific, | |
| The standard of great Spain. | 20 |
| |
| In Caribbean coves, dark vanished vessels, | |
| Lurking and hiding thrice a hundred years, | |
| Figure again your mad and merry wrestles, | |
| Beaks of the buccaneers! | |
| |
| Come, you that bore through boughs of dripping blossom, | 25 |
| Ogeron with his headsman and his priest, | |
| Where Limousin with treasure in his bosom | |
| Dreamed, and in dreaming ceased. | |
| |
| Barks at whose name to-day the nursling shivers, | |
| Come, with the bubble-rafts where men swept down | 30 |
| Along the foam and fall of mighty rivers | |
| To sack the isthmian town! | |
| |
| Through dusky bayous known in old romances | |
| In one great furtive squadron move, you host | |
| That took to death and drowning those free-lances, | 35 |
| The Brethren of the Coast! | |
| |
| Come, Drake, come, Hawkins, to your sad employer, | |
| Come, L’Olonnois and Davila, again, | |
| Come, you great ships of Montbar the Destroyer, | |
| Of Morgan and his men! | 40 |
| |
| Dipping and slipping under shadowy high-lands, | |
| Dashing in haste the swifter fate to meet, | |
| Come from your wrecks on haunted keys and islands, | |
| Cervera’s valiant fleet! | |
| |
| Galleons, and merchantmen, and sloops of story, | 45 |
| O silent escort, follow in full train | |
| This passing phantom of an ancient glory, | |
| The Navy of Old Spain! | |
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