sleep, and you open and shine;
And I know as my own grow blind
With a lonely prayer for your sake,
He will hear--even me--little eyes that were kind,
God bless you, asleep or awake._

FORTY SINGING SEAMEN AND OTHER POEMS

_TO GARNETT_

FORTY SINGING SEAMEN

"In our lands be Beeres and Lyons of dyvers colours as ye redd, grene,
black, and white. And in our land be also unicornes and these Unicornes
slee many Lyons.... Also there dare no man make a lye in our lande, for
if he dyde he sholde incontynent be sleyn."--_Mediaeval Epistle, of Pope
Prester John._

I

Across the seas of Wonderland to Mogadore we plodded,
Forty singing seamen in an old black barque,
And we landed in the twilight where a Polyphemus nodded
With his battered moon-eye winking red and yellow through the dark!
For his eye was growing mellow,
Rich and ripe and red and yellow,
As was time, since old Ulysses made him bellow in the dark!
_Cho._--Since Ulysses bunged his eye up with a pine-torch in the dark!

II

_Were_ they mountains in the gloaming or the giant's ugly shoulders
Just beneath the rolling eyeball, with its bleared and vinous glow,
Red and yellow o'er the purple of the pines among the boulders
And the shaggy horror brooding on the sullen slopes below,
_Were_ they pines among the boulders
Or the hair upon his shoulders?
We were only simple seamen, so of course we didn't know.
_Cho._--We were simple singing seamen, so of course we couldn't know.

III

But we crossed a plain of poppies, and we came upon a fountain
Not of water, but of jewels, like a spray of leaping fire;
And behind it, in an emerald glade, beneath a golden mountain
There stood a crystal palace, for a sailor to admire;
For a troop of ghosts came round us,
Which with leaves of bay they crowned us,
Then with grog they well nigh drowned us, to the depth of our desire!
_Cho._--And 'twas very friendly of them, as a sailor can admire!

IV

There was music all about us, we were growing quite forgetful
We were only singing seamen from the dirt of London-town,
Though the nectar that we swallowed seemed to vanish half regretful
As if we wasn't good enough to take such vittles down,
When we saw a sudden figure,
T