Ballads of Lost Haven
A Book of the Sea
By Bliss Carman
Author of Low Tide on Grand Pré, Behind the Arras, Songs fromVagabondia, &c.
Lamson, Wolffe and Company
Boston, New York and London
MDCCCXCVII
Copyright, 1897
by Lamson, Wolffe and Company
All rights reserved
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
Contents
A SON OF THE SEA
I was born for deep-sea faring;
I was bred to put to sea;
Stories of my father's daring
Filled me at my mother's knee.
I was sired among the surges;
I was cubbed beside the foam;
All my heart is in its verges,
And the sea wind is my home.
All my boyhood, from far vernal
Bourns of being, came to me
Dream-like, plangent, and eternal
Memories of the plunging sea.
THE GRAVEDIGGER
Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old,
And well his work is done.
With an equal grave for lord and knave,
He buries them every one.
Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;
And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;
But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,—
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.
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