s:

Heavy of heart was our Admirall,
For, out of his ships--and they were but three!--
He had lost the fairest and most tall,
And--he was a Knight of the Ocean-sea.

_Ever the more, ever the more,
He heard the winds and the waves roar!
Thunder on thunder shook the shore._

Heavy of heart, heavy of heart,
For she was a galleon mighty as May,
And the storm that ripped her glory apart
Had stripped his soul for the winter's way;

And he was aware of a whisper blown
From foc'sle to poop, from windward to lee,
That the fault was his, and his alone,
And--he was a Knight of the Ocean-sea.

"Had he done that! Had he done this!"
And yet his mariners loved him well;
But an idle word is hard to miss,
And the foam hides more than the deep can tell.

And the deep had buried his best-loved books,
With many a hard-worn chart and plan:
And a king that is conquered must see strange looks,
So bitter a thing is the heart of man!

And--"Who will you find to pay your debt?
For a venture like this is a costly thing!
Will they stake yet more, tho' your heart be set
On the mightier voyage you planned for the Spring?"

He raised his head like a Viking crowned,--
"I'll take my old flag to her Majestie,
And she will lend me ten thousand pound
To make her Queen of the Ocean-sea!"

_Ever the more, ever the more,
He heard the winds and the waves roar!
Thunder on thunder shook the shore._

Outside--they heard the great winds blow!
Outside--the blustering surf they heard,
And the bravest there would ha' blenched to know
That they must be taken at their own word.

For the great grim waves were as molten lead
--And he had two ships who sailed with three!--
"And I sail not home till the Spring," he said,
"They are all too frail for the Ocean-sea."

But the trumpeter thought of an ale-house bench,
And the cabin-boy longed for a Devonshire lane,
And the gunner remembered a green-gowned wench,
And the fos'cle whisper went round again,--

"Sir Humphrey Gilbert is hard of hand,
But his courage went down with the ship, may-be,
And we wait for the Spring in a desert land,
For--_he is afraid of the Ocean-sea_."

_Ever the more, ever the more,