THE DERELICT.

Make way! Make way! to the larboard! port! The chop and the swell are mine! And I am the ghost of the brawling tide, The lord of the whelming brine! And I am the wraith of the inky rain, Made mad by the swash and swirl, That pillaged the souls of a hundred men, Who sunk in a dizzy whirl. Dip, dip your flag and your milk-white rag, And lavish your dole and fee, But turn your prow! Make room! Make room! For there’s never a truce for me! I challenge the bar and the stout sea-wall; I silence the brazen bell; I muffle the song of the galley-slave In a maze and a dream of hell. For mine is the blood of the blackest night, Made red by the comet’s flare; And I am in league with the rampant blade That leaps from the thunder’s lair. I masque in the targe of the afterglow, When the fisherman tacks for home; I crouch in the track where the green-bills whirl, And hide in the gullied foam. O, the long-wide waves, with their snowy bloom, When the winds are at rest, are mine; And the organ-shrill of the equinox, Which musters the hordes in line, Comes echoing back from the low frontier, And crags where the breakers boom, Like the crooning notes of a lorelei, For I am the sleuth of Doom. And ever the cry of the wander-lure, Alert with a lifting wing, Is urging me on through the sludge and spume, With a sugg and a heave and swing. And I am alive! though the dead be dead, And huddled in crowds below, With their faces paled in a murky sleep; Make way! Make way! Yo ho! For I am in search of the glut and sack, The plunder of ship and crew, And I am the skipper of wrack and raid, And my hundred souls are true! And I am the stumbling-block of life, The lord of the whelming brine, I flank the gates of the curving world, And its great sea-paths are mine.