In Flanders Fields and Other Poems — The Song of the Derelict

The Song of the Derelict Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes (I scorn your beguiling, O sea!

) Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.

(A treacherous lover, the sea!

) Once I saw as I lay, half-awash in the night A hull in the gloom -- a quick hail -- and a light And I lurched o'er to leeward and saved her for spite From the doom that ye meted to me.

I was sister to 'Terrible', seventy-four, (Yo ho!

for the swing of the sea!

) And ye sank her in fathoms a thousand or more (Alas!

for the might of the sea!

) Ye taunt me and sing me her fate for a sign!

What harm can ye wreak more on me or on mine?

Ho braggart!

I care not for boasting of thine -- A fig for the wrath of the sea!

Some night to the lee of the land I shall steal, (Heigh-ho to be home from the sea!

) No pilot but Death at the rudderless wheel, (None knoweth the harbor as he!

) To lie where the slow tide creeps hither and fro And the shifting sand laps me around, for I know That my gallant old crew are in Port long ago -- For ever at peace with the sea!

Quebec