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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse  »  169 . The Submarine

Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

By Will Lawson

169 . The Submarine

THE GREY of Ocean’s denseness

Surrounds her like a veil;

In silent deeps’ immenseness

No laughing seas give hail;

But round her, rudely riven,

The sullen waters feel

Her stout hull, engine-driven,

A thrilling thing of steel

That cleaves a pathway under

The breakers’ snarling lips—

That mocks the big guns’ thunder

And scorns the battle-ships.

She goes by deeps and shallows

’Neath blue Australian seas,

Where never sun enhaloes

A wandering ocean breeze;

Yet, at her steersman’s willing,

She lifts her stalk-like eye

To see the sunlight spilling

Its gold on sea and sky;

And, mirrored in fair colour,

The picture true is thrown

Where, in the sea-light duller,

Her spinning engines drone.

When, with her bearings taken,

She plunges deep again,

She is as one forsaken,

Beyond the world of men.

Yet living men tend truly

Her tanks’ and air-valves’ flow,

And oil her engines duly,

For it was ordered so—

Aye, tho’ beyond the borders

Of human worlds they be,

Their orders still are orders,

And what avails the sea?

’Neath bright electrics glowing

They reck not that outside,

In age-long course, is flowing

The grey-green under-tide.

By periscope and needle

And pressure gauge they steer;

For who with steel can wheedle

As does the engineer,

In whose quick brain is hidden

The secrets of the stars—

Who on the storms has ridden,

And hurled the thunder-cars?

He hears the steady murmur

Of engines in the gloom.

Could deck or floor be firmer

Than his deep engine-room?

And he whose touch the rudders

Respond to like a child,

Calm, when she turns and shudders,

With silent mien and mild—

He makes new pathways under

The breakers’ snarling lips;

He mocks the big guns’ thunder

And scorns the battle-ships.