Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!
30
They ate their whack and they drank their fill,
And I think the rations has made them ill,
For half my comp’ny’s lying still
Where the Widow give the party.
‘How did you get away-away,
35
Johnnie, Johnnie?’
On the broad o’ my back at the end o’ the day,
Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!
I comed away like a bleedin’ toff,
For I got four niggers to carry me off,
40
As I lay in the bight of a canvas trough,
When the Widow give the party.
‘What was the end of all the show,
Johnnie, Johnnie?’
Ask my Colonel, for I don’t know,
45
Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha!
We broke a King and we built a road –
A court-house stands where the Reg’ment goed.
And the river’s clean where the raw blood flowed
When the Widow give the party.
50
(Bugle: Ta-rara-ra-ra-rara!)
The Exiles’ Line
Now the New Year reviving old desires,
The restless soul to open sea aspires,
Where the Blue Peter flickers from the fore,
And the grimed stoker feeds the engine-fires.
5
Coupons, alas, depart with all their rows,
And last year’s sea-met loves where Grindlay knows;
But still the wild wind wakes off Gardafui,
And hearts turn eastward with the P. & O.’s.
Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less –
10
Oh, slothful mother of much idleness,
Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed!
Nay, bear us gently! Wherefore need we press?
The Tragedy of all our East is laid
On those white decks beneath the awning shade –
15
Birth, absence, longing, laughter, love and tears,
And death unmaking ere the land is made.
And midnight madnesses of souls distraught
Whom the cool seas call through the open port,
So that the table lacks one place next morn,
20
And for one forenoon men forgo their sport.
The shadow of the rigging to and fro
Sways, shifts, and flickers on the spar-deck’s snow,
And like a giant trampling in his chains,
The screw-blades gasp and thunder deep below;
25
And, leagued to watch one flying-fish’s wings,
Heaven stoops to sea, and sea to Heaven clings;
While, bent upon the ending of his toil,
The hot sun strides, regarding not these things:
For the same wave that meets our stem in spray
30
Bore Smith of Asia eastward yesterday,
And Delhi Jones and Brown of Midnapore
To-morrow follow on the self-same way.
Linked in the chain of Empire, one by one,
Flushed with long leave, or tanned with many a sun,
35
The Exiles’ Line brings out the exiles’ line,
And ships them homeward when their work is done.
Yea, heedless of the shuttle through the loom,
The flying keels fulfil the web of doom.
Sorrow or shouting – what is that to them?
40
Make out the cheque that pays for cabin-room!
And howso many score of times ye flit
With wife and babe and caravan of kit,
Not all thy travels past shall lower one fare,
Not all thy tears abate one pound of it.
45
And howso high thine earth-born dignity,
Honour and state, go sink it in the sea,
Till that great One upon the quarter-deck,
Brow-bound with gold, shall give thee leave to be.
Indeed, indeed from that same Line we swear
50
Off for all time, and mean it when we swear;
And then, and then we meet the Quartered Flag,
And, surely for the last time, pay the fare.
And Green of Kensington, estrayed to view
In three short months the world he never knew,
55
Stares with blind eyes upon the Quartered Flag
And sees no more than yellow, red and blue.
But we, the gipsies of the East, but we –
Waifs of the land and wastrels of the sea –
Come nearer home beneath the Quartered Flag
60
Than ever home shall come to such as we.
The camp is struck, the bungalow decays,
Dead friends and houses desert mark our ways,
Till sickness send us down to Prince’s Dock
To meet the changeless use of many days.
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Bound in the wheel of Empire, one by one,
The chain-gangs of the East from sire to son,
The Exiles’ Line takes out the exiles’ line
And ships them homeward when their work is done.
How runs the old indictment? ‘Dear and slow,’
70
So much and twice so much. We gird, but go.
For all the soul of our sad East is there,
Beneath the house-flag of the P. & O.!
When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted
When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it – lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
5
And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets’ hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from – Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!
And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;
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And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!
In the Neolithic Age
In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses’ pelt.
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
5
Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.
But a rival of Solutré, told the tribe my style was outré –
10
’Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell.
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
15
And I wiped my mouth and said, ‘It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong.’
But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night: –
‘There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
20
And every single one of them is right!’
Then the
silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;
And I stepped beneath Time’s finger, once again a tribal singer,
And a minor poet certified by Traill!
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Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow,
When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.
Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
30
Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide – as we dropped the half-dressed hide –
To show a fellow-savage how to work.
Still the world is wondrous large, – seven seas from marge to marge –
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
35
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.
Here’s my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roamed where Paris roars to-night:–
‘There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
40
And-every-single-one-of-them-is-right!’
The Last Chantey
‘And there was no more sea.’
Revelation 21:1
Thus said the Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim,
Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
‘Lo! Earth has passed away
On the smoke of Judgement Day.
5
That Our word may be established shall We gather up the Sea?’
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly Mariners:
‘Plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee!
But the war is done between us,
In the deep the Lord hath seen us –
10
Our bones we’ll leave the barracout’, and God may sink the Sea!’
Then said the soul of Judas that betrayèd Him:
‘Lord, hast Thou forgotten Thy covenant with me?
How once a year I go
To cool me on the floe?
15
And Ye take my day of mercy if Ye take away the Sea!’
Then said the soul of the Angel of the Off-shore Wind:
(He that bits the thunder when the bull-mouthed breakers flee):
‘I have watch and ward to keep
O’er Thy wonders on the deep,
20
And Ye take mine honour from me if Ye take away the Sea!’
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly Mariners:
‘Nay, but we were angry, and a hasty folk are we.
If we worked the ship together
Till she foundered in foul weather,
25
Are we babes that we should clamour for a vengeance on the Sea?’
Then said the souls of the Slaves that men threw overboard:
‘Kennelled in the picaroon a weary band were we;
But Thy arm was strong to save,
And it touched us on the wave,
30
And we drowsed the long tides idle till Thy Trumpets tore the Sea.’
Then cried the soul of the stout Apostle Paul to God:
‘Once we frapped a ship, and she laboured woundily.
There were fourteen score of these,
And they blessed Thee on their knees,
35
When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under Malta by the Sea!’
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly Mariners,
Plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily:
‘Our thumbs are rough and tarred,
And the tune is something hard –
40
May we lift a Deepsea Chantey such as seamen use at sea?’
Then said the souls of the Gentlemen-Adventurers –
Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:
‘Ho, we revel in our chains
O’er the sorrow that was Spain’s!
45
Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the Sea!’
Up spake the soul of a grey Gothavn ’speckshioner –
(He that led the flenching in the fleets of fair Dundee):
‘Oh, the ice-blink white and near,
And the bowhead breaching clear!
50
Will Ye whelm them all for wantonness that wallow in the Sea?’
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly Mariners,
Crying: ‘Under Heaven, here is neither lead nor lee!
Must we sing for evermore
On the windless, glassy floor?
55
Take back your golden fiddles and we’ll beat to open sea!’
Then stooped the Lord, and He called the good Sea up to Him,
And ’stablishèd its borders unto all eternity,
That such as have no pleasure
For to praise the Lord by measure,
60
They may enter into galleons and serve Him on the Sea.
Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it,
Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;
And the ships shall go abroad
To the Glory of the Lord
65
Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their Sea!
‘For to Admire’
The Injian ocean sets an’ smiles
So sof’, so bright, so bloomin’ blue;
There aren’t a wave for miles an’ miles
Excep’ the jiggle from the screw.
5
The ship is swep’, the day is done,
The bugle’s gone for smoke and play;
An’ black ag’in the settin’ sun
The Lascar sings, ‘Hum deckty hai!’
For to admire an’ for to see,
10
For to be’old this world so wide –
It never done no good to me,
But I can’t drop it if I tried!
I see the sergeants pitchin’ quoits,
I ’ear the women laugh an’ talk,
15
I spy upon the quarter-deck
The orficers an’ lydies walk.
I thinks about the things that was,
An’ leans an’ looks acrost the sea,
Till, spite of all the crowded ship,
20
There’s no one lef’ alive but me.
The things that was which I ’ave seen,
In barrick, camp, an’ action too,
I tells them over by myself,
An’ sometimes wonders if they’re true;
25
For they was odd – most awful odd –
But all the same, now they are o’er,
There must be ’eaps o’ plenty such,
An’ if I wait I’ll see some more.
Oh, I ’ave come upon the books,
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