The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #99170   Message #2114683
Posted By: Charley Noble
30-Jul-07 - 09:35 AM
Thread Name: Old Sailor-Poets (early 1900's)
Subject: RE: Old Sailor-Poets (early 1900's)
Here's a change of pace, a nautical poem by John Masefield:

From SALT WATER POEMS AND BALLADS, John Masefield, published by The Macmillan Co., NY, © 1912, p. 51.

A Pier-Head Chorus

Oh I'll be chewing salted horse and biting flinty bread,
And dancing with the stars to watch, upon the fo'c's'le head,
Hearkening to the bow-wash and the welter of the tread
Of a thousand tons of clipper running free.

For the tug has got the tow-rope and will take us to the Downs,
Her paddles churn the river-wrack to muddy greens and browns,
And I have given river-wrack and all the filth of towns
For the rolling, combing cresters of the sea.

We'll sheet the mizzen-royals home and shimmer down the Bay,
The sea-line blue with billows, the land-line blurred and grey;
The bow-wash will be piling high and thrashing into spray,
As the hooker's fore-foot tramples down the swell.

She'll log a giddy seventeen and rattle out the reel,
The weight of all the run-out line will be a thing to feel,
As the bacca-quidding shell-back shambles aft to take the wheel,
And the sea-sick little middy strikes the bell.

Here's a link to how I've adapted this one for singing: click and go to MP3 sample

Cheerily,
Charley Noble