elf, how reach
Our bar or weighed defence prefer--
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter?

Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But while reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.

Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets th' embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.

Lo! imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, disreputable, vast--
And, in the teeth of all the schools
I--I shall save him at the last!

THE MARY GLOSTER.

I've paid for your sickest fancies; I've humoured your crackedest
whim--
Dick, it's your daddy--dying: you've got to listen to him!
Good for a fortnight, am I? The doctor told you? He lied.
I shall go under by morning, and---- Put that nurse outside.
Never seen death yet, Dickie? Well, now is your time to learn,
And you'll wish you held my record before it comes to your turn.
Not counting the Line and the Foundry, the yards and the village, too,
I've made myself and a million; but I'm damned if I made you.
Master at two-and-twenty, and married at twenty three--
Ten thousand men on the pay-roll, and forty freighters at sea!
Fifty years between 'em, and every year of it fight,
And now I'm Sir Anthony Gloster, dying, a baronite:
For I lunched with His Royal 'Ighness--what was it the papers a-had?
"Not least of our merchant-princes." Dickie, that's me, your dad!
_I_ didn't begin with askings. _I_ took my job and I stuck;
And I took the chances they wouldn't, an' now they're calling it luck.
Lord, what boats I've handled--rotten and leaky and old!
Ran 'em, or--opened the bilge-cock, precisely as I was told.
Grub that 'ud bind you crazy, and crews that 'ud turn you gray,
And a big fat lump of insurance to cover the risk on the way.
The others they duresn't do it; they said they valued their life
(They've served me since as skippers). _I_ went, and I took my wife.
Over the world I drove 'em, married at twenty-three,
And your mother saving the money and making a man of me.
I was content to be master, but she said there was better behind;
She took the chances I wouldn't, and I followed your mother blind.
She egged me to borrow the money, an' she helped me clear the loan,
When we b