Sailing poems

With apologies to Rotrax and BobnLesley.

The boy, still on that burning deck
without a leg to stand,
lamented at his disappearing limb.
This wasn’t what I planned!
 
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Blueboatman said:
With apologies to Rotrax and BobnLesley.

The boy, still on that burning deck
without a leg to stand,
lamented at his disappearing limb.
This wasn’t what I planned!
Click to expand...
There’s always the Spike Milligan version:

“The boy stood …

Twit!”
 
Always liked this from Ezra Pound:

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
 
There's this:

Harp Song of the Dane Women​

By Rudyard Kipling

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in—
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken—

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables—
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker ?
 
I was once asked to write a rhyme for the ships logbook by a catamaran owning friend of mine on a trip from Glasgow to Portsmouth. Inspired by a passing hedland:

Lighthouse lighthouse on a cliff

If I lived there I'd be bored stiff.
 
Byron's Don Juan is always a good source of education and amusement. I quote

Here the ship gave a lurch and he grew sea-sick.)

“Sooner shall heaven kiss earth!” (Here he fell sicker.)

“Oh, Julia! what is every other woe?

(For God’s sake let me have a glass of liquor;

Pedro, Battista, help me down below.)

Julia, my love! (you rascal, Pedro, quicker)

Oh, Julia! (this curst vessel pitches so)

Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching!”

(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)

He felt that chilling heaviness of heart,

Or rather stomach, which, alas! attends,

Beyond the best apothecary’s art,

The loss of love, the treachery of friends,

Or death of those we dote on, when a part

Of us dies with them as each fond hope ends.

No doubt he would have been much more pathetic,

But the sea acted as a strong emetic.
 
We had to learn that at school and I haven't forgotten a word:

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days
With a cargo of pig-iron, something, something,
Something, something and cheap tin trays
 
From "Sailing the Sea" by Hilaire Belloc:

"I love to consider a place which I have never yet seen, but which I shall reach at last, full of repose and marking the end of those voyages, and security from the tumble of the sea. This place will be a cove set round with high hills on which there shall be no house or sign of men, and it shall be enfolded by quite deserted land, but the westering sun will shine pleasantly upon it under a warm air. It will be a proper place for sleep.

The fairway into that haven shall be behind a pleasant sandy beach, which shall run out aslant into the sea, and shall be a breakwater made by God. The tide shall run up behind it smoothly, and in a silent way, filling the quiet of the sand dunes brimming it all up like a cup – a cup of refreshment and quiet, a cup of ending.

Then with what pleasure shall I put my small boat round, just round the point of that sandy beach, noting the shoal water by the eddies and the deeps by the blue colour of them where the channel runs from the main into the fair-way. Up that fair-way shall I go, up into the cove, and the gates of it shall shut behind me, headland against headland, so that I shall not see the open sea any more, though I shall still hear its distant noise. But all around me, save for that distant echo of the surf will be silence, and the evening will be gathering already.

Under the falling light, all alone in such a place I shall let go the anchor chain, and let it rattle for the last time. My anchor will go down into the clear salt water with a run, and when it touches I shall pay out four lengths, or more, so that she may swing easily and not drag, and then I shall tie up my canvas and fasten all for the night and get me ready for sleep. And that will be the end of my sailing."
 
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Poignard said:
From "Sailing the Sea" by Hilaire Belloc:

"I love to consider a place which I have never yet seen, but which I shall reach at last, full of repose and marking the end of those voyages, and security from the tumble of the sea. This place will be a cove set round with high hills on which there shall be no house or sign of men, and it shall be enfolded by quite deserted land, but the westering sun will shine pleasantly upon it under a warm air. It will be a proper place for sleep.
Click to expand...
Belloc is unusual, looking at the bright side of life😉
 
There once was a sailor from Stoke
Who only went to Sea as a joke
Once when he wasn’t sober
He found a girl and tried to disrobe her
What he found hanging down convinced him it was a bloke
 
Some good ones already.

Walt Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain!
has to be included in any anthology of seafaring verse.

"O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead."
 
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