Selections from DAUBER

Darker it grew, still darker, and the stars Burned golden, and the fiery fishes came. The wire-note loudened from the straining spars; The sheet-blocks clacked together always the same; The rushing fishes streaked the seas with flame, Racing the one speed noble as their own: What unknown joy was in those fish unknown! Names in the darkness passed and voices cried; The red spark glowed and died, the faces seemed As things remembered when a brain has died, To all but high intenseness deeply dreamed. Like hissing spears the fishes’ fire streamed, And on the clipper rushed with tossing mast, A bath of flame broke round her as she passed. The watch was set, the night came, and the men Hid from the moon in shadowed nooks to sleep, Bunched like the dead; still, like the dead, as when Plague in a city leaves none even to weep. The ship’s track brightened to a mile-broad sweep; The mate there felt her pulse, and eyed the spars: South-west by south she staggered under the stars.

Down in his bunk the Dauber lay awake Thinking of his unfitness for the sea. Each failure, each derision, each mistake, There in the life not made for such as he; A morning grim with trouble sure to be, A noon of pain from failure, and a night Bitter with men’s contemning and despite. This in the first beginning, the green leaf, Still in the Trades before bad weather fell; What harvest would he reap of hate and grief When the loud Horn made every life a hell? When the sick ship lay over, clanging her bell, And no time came for painting or for drawing, But all hands fought, and icy death came clawing? The green bunk curtains moved, the brass rings clicked, The Cook cursed in his sleep, turning and turning, The moonbeam’s moving finger touched and picked, And all the stars in all the sky were burning. “This is the art I’ve come for, and am learning, The sea and ships and men and travelling things. It is most proud, whatever pain it brings.” He leaned upon his arm and watched the light Sliding and fading to the steady roll; This he would some day paint, the ship at night, And sleeping seamen tired to the soul; The space below the bunks as black as coal, Gleams upon chests, upon the unlit lamp, The ranging door-hook, and the locker clamp. This he would paint, and that, and all these scenes, And proud ships carrying on, and men their minds, And blues of rollers toppling into greens, And shattering into white that bursts and blinds, And scattering ships running erect like hinds, And men in oilskins beating down a sail High on the yellow yard, in snow, in hail, With faces ducked down from the slanting drive Of half-thawed hail mixed with half-frozen spray, The roaring canvas, like a thing alive, Shaking the mast, knocking their hands away, The foot-ropes jerking to the tug and sway, The savage eyes salt-reddened at the rims, And icicles on the south-wester brims. And sunnier scenes would grow under his brush, The tropic dawn with all things dropping dew, The darkness and the wonder and the hush, The insensate grey before the marvel grew; Then the veil lifted from the trembling blue, The walls of sky burst in, the flower, the rose, All the expanse of heaven a mind that glows. He turned out of his bunk; the Cook still tossed, One of the other two spoke in his sleep, A cockroach scuttled where the moonbeam crossed; Outside there was the ship, the night, the deep. “It is worth while,” the youth said; “I will keep To my resolve, I’ll learn to paint all this. My Lord, my God, how beautiful it is!” Outside was the ship’s rush to the wind’s hurry, A resonant wire-hum from every rope, The broadening bow-wash in a fiery flurry, The leaning masts in their majestic slope, And all things strange with moonlight: filled with hope By all that beauty going as man bade, He turned and slept in peace. Eight bells were made.

Even now they shifted suits of sails; they bent The storm-suit ready for the expected time; The mighty wester that the Plate had lent Had brought them far into the wintry clime. At dawn, out of the shadow, there was rime, The dim Magellan Clouds were frosty clear, The wind had edge, the testing-time was near. And then he wondered if the tales were lies Told by old hands to terrify the new, For, since the ship left England, only twice Had there been need to start a sheet or clew, Then only royals, for an hour or two, And no seas broke aboard, nor was it cold. What were these gales of which the stories told? The thought went by. He had heard the Bosun tell Too often, and too fiercely, not to know That being off the Horn in June is hell: Hell of continual toil in ice and snow, Frostbitten hell in which the westers blow Shrieking for days on end, in which the seas Gulf the starved seamen till their marrows freeze. Such was the weather he might look to find, Such was the work expected: there remained Firmly to set his teeth, resolve his mind, And be the first, however much it pained, And bring his honour round the Horn unstained, And win his mates’ respect; and thence, untainted, Be ranked as man however much he painted. He drew deep breath; a gantline swayed aloft A lower topsail, hard with rope and leather, Such as men’s frozen fingers fight with oft Below the Ramirez in Cape Horn weather. The arms upon the yard hove all together, Lighting the head along; a thought occurred Within the painter’s brain like a bright bird: That this, and so much like it, of man’s toil, Compassed by naked manhood in strange places, Was all heroic, but outside the coil Within which modern art gleams or grimaces; That if he drew that line of sailors’ faces Sweating the sail, their passionate play and change, It would be new, and wonderful, and strange. That that was what his work meant; it would be A training in new vision, a revealing Of passionate men in battle with the sea, High on an unseen stage, shaking and reeling; And men through him would understand their feeling, Their might, their misery, their tragic power, And all by suffering pain a little hour; High on the yard with them, feeling their pain, Battling with them; and it had not been done. He was a door to new worlds in the brain, A window opening letting in the sun, A voice saying, “Thus is bread fetched and ports won, And life lived out at sea where men exist Solely by man’s strong brain and sturdy wrist.” So he decided, as he cleaned his brasses, Hearing without, aloft, the curse, the shout Where the taut gantline passes and repasses, Heaving new topsails to be lighted out. It was most proud, however self might doubt, To share man’s tragic toil and paint it true. He took the offered Fate: this he would do. That night the snow fell between six and seven, A little feathery fall so light, so dry, An aimless dust out of a confused heaven, Upon an air no steadier than a sigh; The powder dusted down and wandered by So purposeless, so many, and so cold, Then died, and the wind ceased and the ship rolled. Rolled till she clanged, rolled till the brain was tired, Marking the acme of the heaves, the pause While the sea-beauty rested and respired, Drinking great draughts of roller at her hawse. Flutters of snow came aimless upon flaws. “Lock up your paints,” the Mate said, speaking light: “This is the Horn; you’ll join my watch to-night!”

All through the windless night the clipper rolled In a great swell with oily gradual heaves Which rolled her down until her time-bells tolled, Clang, and the weltering water moaned like beeves. The thundering rattle of slatting shook the sheaves, Startles of water made the swing ports gush, The sea was moaning and sighing and saying “Hush!” It was all black and starless. Peering down Into the water, trying to pierce the gloom, One saw a dim, smooth, oily glitter of brown Heaving and dying away and leaving room For yet another. Like the march of doom Came those great powers of marching silences; Then fog came down, dead-cold, and hid the seas. They set the Dauber to the foghorn. There He stood upon the poop, making to sound Out of the pump the sailors’ nasal blare, Listening lest ice should make the note resound. She bayed there like a solitary hound Lost in a covert; all the watch she bayed. The fog, come closelier down, no answer made. Denser it grew, until the ship was lost. The elemental hid her; she was merged In mufflings of dark death, like a man’s ghost, New to the change of death, yet thither urged. Then from the hidden waters something surged— Mournful, despairing, great, greater than speech, A noise like one slow wave on a still beach. Mournful, and then again mournful, and still Out of the night that mighty voice arose; The Dauber at his foghorn felt the thrill. Who rode that desolate sea? What forms were those? Mournful, from things defeated, in the throes Of memory of some conquered hunting-ground, Out of the night of death arose the sound. “Whales!” said the mate. They stayed there all night long Answering the horn. Out of the night they spoke, Defeated creatures who had suffered wrong, But were still noble underneath the stroke. They filled the darkness when the Dauber woke; The men came peering to the rail to hear, And the sea sighed, and the fog rose up sheer. So the night past, but then no morning broke— Only a something showed that night was dead. A sea-bird, cackling like a devil, spoke, And the fog drew away and hung like lead. Like mighty cliffs it shaped, sullen and red; Like glowering gods at watch it did appear, And sometimes drew away, and then drew near. Like islands, and like chasms, and like hell, But always mighty and red, gloomy and ruddy, Shutting the visible sea in like a well; Slow heaving in vast ripples, blank and muddy, Where the sun should have risen it streaked bloody. The day was still-born; all the sea-fowl scattering Splashed the still water, mewing, hovering, clattering. Then Polar snow came down little and light, Till all the sky was hidden by the small, Most multitudinous drift of dirty white Tumbling and wavering down and covering all; Covering the sky, the sea, the clipper tall, Furring the ropes with white, casing the mast, Coming on no known air, but blowing past. And all the air seemed full of gradual moan, As though in those cloud-chasms the horns were blowing The mort for gods cast out and overthrown, Or for the eyeless sun plucked out and going. Slow the low gradual moan came in the snowing; The Dauber felt the prelude had begun. The snowstorm fluttered by; he saw the sun Show and pass by, gleam from one towering prison Into another, vaster and more grim, Which in dull crags of darkness had arisen To muffle-to a final door on him. The gods upon the dull crags lowered dim, The pigeons chattered, quarrelling in the track. In the south-west the dimness dulled to black. Then came the cry of “Call all hands on deck!” The Dauber knew its meaning; it was come: Cape Horn, that tramples beauty into wreck, And crumples steel and smites the strong man dumb. Down clattered flying kites and staysails: some Sang out in quick, high calls; the fairleads skirled, And from the south-west came the end of the world.

Night fell, and all night long the Dauber lay Covered upon the table; all night long The pitiless storm exulted at her prey, Huddling the waters with her icy thong. But to the covered shape she did no wrong. He lay beneath the sailcloth. Bell by bell The night wore through; the stars rose, the stars fell. Blowing most pitiless cold out of clear sky The wind roared all night long; and all night through The green seas on the deck went washing by, Flooding the half-deck; bitter hard it blew. But little of it all the Dauber knew; The sopping bunks, the floating chests, the wet, The darkness, and the misery, and the sweat. He was off duty. So it blew all night, And when the watches changed the men would come Dripping within the door to strike a light And stare upon the Dauber lying dumb, And say, “He come a cruel thump, poor chum.” Or, “He’d a-been a fine big man”; or, “He ... A smart young seaman he was getting to be.” Or, “Damn it all, it’s what we’ve all to face!... I knew another fellow one time ...” then Came a strange tale of death in a strange place Out on the sea, in ships, with wandering men. In many ways Death puts us into pen. The reefers came down tired and looked and slept. Below the skylight little dribbles crept. Along the painted woodwork, glistening, slow, Following the roll and dripping, never fast, But dripping on the quiet form below, Like passing time talking to time long past. And all night long “Ai, ai!” went the wind’s blast, And creaming water swished below the pale, Unheeding body stretched beneath the sail. At dawn they sewed him up, and at eight bells They bore him to the gangway, wading deep, Through the green-clutching, white-toothed water-hells That flung his carriers over in their sweep. They laid an old red ensign on the heap, And all hands stood bare-headed, stooping, swaying, Washed by the sea while the old man was praying Out of a borrowed prayer-book. At a sign They twitched the ensign back and tipped the grating. A creamier bubbling broke the bubbling brine. The muffled figure tilted to the weighting; It dwindled slowly down, slowly gyrating. Some craned to see; it dimmed, it disappeared; The last green milky bubble blinked and cleared. “Mister, shake out your reefs,” the Captain called. “Out topsail reefs!” the Mate cried; then all hands Hurried, the great sails shook, and all hands hauled, Singing that desolate song of lonely lands, Of how a lover came in dripping bands, Green with the wet and cold, to tell his lover That Death was in the sea, and all was over. Fair came the falling wind; a seaman said The Dauber was a Jonah; once again The clipper held her course, showing red lead, Shattering the sea-tops into golden rain. The waves bowed down before her like blown grain; Onwards she thundered, on; her voyage was short, Before the tier’s bells rang her into port. Cheerly they rang her in, those beating bells, The new-come beauty stately from the sea, Whitening the blue heave of the drowsy swells, Treading the bubbles down. With three times three They cheered her moving beauty in, and she Came to her berth so noble, so superb; Swayed like a queen, and answered to the curb. Then in the sunset’s flush they went aloft, And unbent sails in that most lovely hour, When the light gentles and the wind is soft, And beauty in the heart breaks like a flower. Working aloft they saw the mountain tower, Snow to the peak; they heard the launchmen shout; And bright along the bay the lights came out. And then the night fell dark, and all night long The pointed mountain pointed at the stars, Frozen, alert, austere; the eagle’s song Screamed from her desolate screes and splintered scars. On her intense crags where the air is sparse The stars looked down; their many golden eyes Watched her and burned, burned out, and came to rise. Silent the finger of the summit stood, Icy in pure, thin air, glittering with snows. Then the sun’s coming turned the peak to blood, And in the rest-house the muleteers arose. And all day long, where only the eagle goes, Stones, loosened by the sun, fall; the stones falling Fill empty gorge on gorge with echoes calling.