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| I CANNOT tell their wonder nor make known | |
| Magic that once thrilled through me to the bone; | |
| But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale, | |
| Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale, | |
| Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf, | 5 |
| Follow some Helen for her gift of grief, | |
| And fail in what they mean, whate’er they do: | |
| You should have seen, man cannot tell to you | |
| The beauty of the ships of that my city. | |
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| That beauty now is spoiled by the sea’s pity; | 10 |
| For one may haunt the pier a score of times, | |
| Hearing St. Nicholas bells ring out the chimes, | |
| Yet never see those proud ones swaying home | |
| With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam, | |
| Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fine, | 15 |
| Those coulters of the many-bubbled brine, | |
| As once, long since, when all the docks were filled | |
| With that sea-beauty man has ceased to build. | |
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| Yet, though their splendor may have ceased to be | |
| Each played her sovereign part in making me; | 20 |
| Now I return my thanks with heart and lips | |
| For the great queenliness of all those ships. | |
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| And first the first bright memory, still so clear, | |
| An autumn evening in a golden year, | |
| When in the last lit moments before dark | 25 |
| The Chepica, a steel-gray lovely barque, | |
| Came to an anchor near us on the flood, | |
| Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood. | |
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| Then come so many ships that I could fill | |
| Three docks with their fair hulls remembered still, | 30 |
| Each with her special memory’s special grace, | |
| Riding the sea, making the waves give place | |
| To delicate high beauty; man’s best strength, | |
| Noble in every line in all their length. | |
| Ailsa, Genista, ships, with long jibbooms, | 35 |
| The Wanderer with great beauty and strange dooms, | |
| Liverpool (mightiest then) superb, sublime, | |
| The California huge, as slow as time. | |
| The Copley swift, the perfect J. T. North, | |
| The loveliest barque my city has sent forth, | 40 |
| Dainty John Lockell well remembered yet, | |
| The splendid Argus with her skysail set, | |
| Stalwart Drumcliff, white-blocked, majestic Sierras, | |
| Divine bright ships, the water’s standard-bearers; | |
| Melpomene, Euphrosyne, and their sweet | 45 |
| Sea-troubling sisters of the Fernie fleet; | |
| Corunna (in whom my friend died) and the old | |
| Long since loved Esmeralda long since sold. | |
| Centurion passed in Rio, Glaucus spoken, | |
| Aladdin burnt, the Bidston water-broken, | 50 |
| Yola, in whom my friend sailed, Dawpool trim, | |
| Fierce-bowed Egeria plunging to the swim, | |
| Stanmore wide-sterned, sweet Cupica, tall Bard, | |
| Queen in all harbors with her moon-sail yard. | |
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| Though I tell many, there must still be others, | 55 |
| McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’, | |
| Lochs, Counties, Shires, Drums, the countless lines | |
| Whose house-flags all were once familiar signs | |
| At high main-trucks on Mersey’s windy ways | |
| When sunlight made the wind-white water blaze. | 60 |
| Their names bring back old mornings, when the docks | |
| Shone with their house-flags and their painted blocks, | |
| Their raking masts below the Custom House | |
| And all the marvellous beauty of their bows. | |
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| Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers, | 65 |
| Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers, | |
| Umbria, Etruria, noble, still at sea, | |
| The grandest, then, that man had brought to be. | |
| Majestic, City of Paris, City of Rome, | |
| Forever jealous racers, out and home. | 70 |
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| The Alfred Holt’s blue smoke-stacks down the stream, | |
| The fair Loanda with her bows a-cream. | |
| Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners, | |
| The marks and styles of countless ship-designers, | |
| The Magdalena, Puno, Potosi, | 75 |
| Lost Cotopaxi, all well known to me. | |
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| These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory, | |
| Her memory of old song or comrade’s story, | |
| Still in my mind the image of life’s need, | |
| Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed. | 80 |
| “They built great ships and sailed them,” sounds most brave, | |
| Whatever arts we have or fail to have. | |
| I touch my country’s mind, I come to grips | |
| With half her purpose, thinking of these ships: | |
| That art untouched by softness, all that line | 85 |
| Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine; | |
| That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty | |
| Born of a manly life and bitter duty; | |
| That splendor of fine bows which yet could stand | |
| The shock of rollers never checked by land; | 90 |
| That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break, | |
| Yet stayed to strength and backstayed into rake; | |
| The life demanded by that art, the keen | |
| Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean. | |
| They are grander things than all the art of towns; | 95 |
| Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns. | |
| They are my country’s line, her great art done | |
| By strong brains laboring on the thought unwon. | |
| They mark our passage as a race of men— | |
| Earth will not see such ships as those again. | 100 |
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