ws were patching old dungaree suits,
Or mending up oilskins and leaky seaboots,
Or whittling a model or painting a chest,
Or yarning and smoking and watching the rest.

In fancy I saw him all weathered and browned,
Deep crows'-feet and wrinkles his eyelids around;
A pipe in the teeth that seemed little the worse
For Liverpool pantiles and stringy salt-horse;
The hairy forearm with its gaudy tattoo
Of a bold-looking female in scarlet and blue;
The fingers all roughened and toughened and scarred,
With hauling and hoisting so calloused and hard,
So crooked and stiff you would wonder that still
They could handle with cunning and fashion with skill
The tiny full-rigger predestined to ride
To its cable of thread on its green-painted tide
In its wine-bottle world, while the old world went on
And the sailor who made it was long ago gone.

And still as he worked at the toy on his knee
He would spin his old yarns of the ships and the sea,
_Thermopylae_, _Lightning_, _Lothair_ and _Red Jacket_,
With many another such famous old packet,
And many a bucko and dare-devil skipper
In Liverpool blood-boat or Colonies' clipper;
The sail that they carried aboard the _Black Ball_,
Their skysails and stunsails and ringtail and all,
And storms that they weathered and races they won
And records they broke in the days that are done.

Or sometimes he'd sing you some droning old song,
Some old sailors' ditty both mournful and long,
With queer little curlycues, twiddles and quavers,
Of smugglers and privateers, pirates and slavers,
"The brave female smuggler," the "packet of fame
That sails from New York and the _Dreadnought_'s her name,"
And "all on the coast of the High Barbaree,"
And "the flash girls of London was the downfall of he."

In fancy I listened, in fancy could hear
The thrum of the shrouds and the creak of the gear,
The patter of reef-points on topsails a-shiver,
The song of the jibs when they tauten and quiver,
The cry of the frigate-bird following after,
The bow-wave that broke with a gurgle like laughter.
And I looked on my youth with its pleasure and pain,
And the shipmate I loved was beside me again.
In a ship in a bottle a-sailing away
In the flying-fish weather through rainbows of spray,
Over oceans of wonder by headlands of gleam,
To the harbours of Youth on the wind of a dream.

C.F.S.

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