Amid her trafficking peers, the wind-wise, journeyed ships,
At the black wharves no more, nor at the weedy slips,
She comes to port with cargo from many a storied clime.
No more to the rough-throat chantey her windlass creaks in time.
No more she loads for London with spices from Ceylon,--
With white spruce deals and wheat and apples from St. John.
No more from Pernambuco with cotton-bales,--no more
With hides from Buenos Ayres she clears for Baltimore.

_Take me out, sink me deep in the green profound,
To sway with the long weed, swing with the drowned,
Where the change of the soft tide makes no sound,
Far below the keels of the outward bound._

Wan with the slow vicissitudes of wind and rain and sun
How grieves her deck for the sailors whose hearty brawls are done!
Only the wandering gull brings word of the open wave,
With shrill scream at her taffrail deriding her alien grave.
Around the keel that raced the dolphin and the shark
Only the sand-wren twitters from barren dawn till dark;
And all the long blank noon the blank sand chafes and mars
The prow once swift to follow the lure of the dancing stars.

_Take me out, sink me deep in the green profound,
To sway with the long weed, swing with the drowned,
Where the change of the soft tide makes no sound,
Far below the keels of the outward bound._

And when the winds are low, and when the tides are still,
And the round moon rises inland over the naked hill,
And o'er her parching seams the dry cloud-shadows pass,
And dry along the land-rim lie the shadows of thin grass,
Then aches her soul with longing to launch and sink away
Where the fine silts lift and settle, and sea-things drift
and stray,
To make the port of Last Desire, and slumber with her peers
In the tide-wash rocking softly through the unnumbered years.

_Take me out, sink me deep in the green profound,
To sway with the long weed, swing with the drowned,
Where the change of the soft tide makes no sound,
Far below the keels of the outward bound._

--_Charles G. D. Roberts (By arrangement)_

PREPARATORY.--What is the fundamental idea of the first
three stanzas? Of the fourth stanza? Of the last stanza?
Of the refrain? Apply these ideas to human life? What
feelings do they arouse? Show that these feelings grow
stronger as the poem advances.

What Time, Pitch, and Stress are the nat