. Salt-water poems and ballads. sing as she made her bed;Full of sick sound she settled deathward, sheGurgled and shook, the digger picked the lead. And, as she paused to take a final plunge,Prone like a half-tide rock, the men on deckJumped to their boats and left, ere like a spongeThe rivers rotten heart absorbed the wreck; And on the perilous instant ere Time struck,The diggers work was done, the lead was cast the manhole up; below it muckFloated, the hold was full, the water leered. All of his labour had but made a holeBy which to leap to death; he saw black dustFloat on the bub
. Salt-water poems and ballads. sing as she made her bed;Full of sick sound she settled deathward, sheGurgled and shook, the digger picked the lead. And, as she paused to take a final plunge,Prone like a half-tide rock, the men on deckJumped to their boats and left, ere like a spongeThe rivers rotten heart absorbed the wreck; And on the perilous instant ere Time struck,The diggers work was done, the lead was cast the manhole up; below it muckFloated, the hold was full, the water leered. All of his labour had but made a holeBy which to leap to death; he saw black dustFloat on the bubbles of that brimming bowl,He drew a breath and took his life in trust. And plunged head foremost into that black floating cargo bumped against the groped a choking passage blind with roaring in his ears was shot with screams. So, with a bursting heart and roaring earsHe floundered in that sunk ships inky in deep water for what seemed like years,Buried alive and groping through the And instantly a panic took the crew,Even the digger blenched} his knife-blades hasteCutting the solder witnessed that he knewTime on the brink with not a breath to waste. THE RIVER rS9 Till suddenly the beams against his backGave, and the water on his eyes was bright;He shot up through a hatchway foul with wrackInto clean air and life and dazzling light, And striking out, he saw the focsle gone,Vanished, below the water, and the mastStanding columnar from the sea; it shoneProud, with its colours flying to the last. And all about, a many-wrinkled tide Smoothed and erased its eddies, wandering chilled, Like glutted purpose, trying to decide If its achievement had been what it willed. And men in boats were there; they helped him gulped for breath and watched that patch of smooth,Shaped like the vessel, wrinkle into to waves and bare a yellow tooth. Then the masts leaned until the shroud-screws disappeared — her masts, her colou
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Keywords: ., bookauthormasefiel, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1916
