sung,
Blessing his tribe for their blindness. _Heed ye the Story of Ung!_

THE THREE-DECKER.

"The three-volume novel is extinct."

Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best--
The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.

Fair held our breeze behind us--'twas warm with lovers' prayers:
We'd stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs;
They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,
And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.

_Carambas_ and _serapes_ we waved to every wind,
We smoked good Corpo Bacco when our sweethearts proved unkind;
With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed
We also took our manners to the Islands of the Blest.

We asked no social questions--we pumped no hidden shame--
We never talked obstetrics when the little stranger came:
We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell.
We weren't exactly Yussufs, but--Zuleika didn't tell!

No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared,
The villain got his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.
'Twas fiddles in the foc'sle--'twas garlands on the mast,
For every one got married, and I went ashore at last.

I left 'em all in couples akissing on the decks.
I left the lovers loving and the parents signing checks.
In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed,
I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest!

That route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again
Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
They're just beyond the skyline, howe'er so far you cruise
In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.

Swing round your aching search-light--'twill show no haven's peace!
Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas!
Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep's unrest--
But you aren't a knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest.

And when you're threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail,
On a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,
Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,
You'll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.

You'll see her tiering canvas in sheeted si