From Carlisle Bay
Skipper’s watch and mate’s watch:
Day and night and day
We’ve reefed and squared and steered her
All up from Carlisle Bay,
With humming trades above us
And rolling seas below,
Hemmed in by hazed horizons
Where tall cloud squadrons go.
Skipper’s watch and mate’s watch:
Through nights and days and nights
We’ve done our sailor duty
According to our lights.
We’ve squared and reefed and steered her
By sun and moon and stars,
And seen the ghostly corpus lights
Slide out the heaving spars.
We know the vasty ocean
In calm and breeze and gale,
And a thousand gleaming wonders
All round the heaving rail.
We know the spicy islands–
Roadstead, wharf and street;
And our hands are hard with manning
Downhaul, brace and sheet.
To-morrow, lads, we’ll raise it!-
A landfall we all know
Of straight cliffs, brown and purple,
With smoking surf below.
To-morrow, lads, we’ll make it!-
And to-morrow night we’ll be
In the old house in the old street
In the town above the sea.
