The Child and the Mariner

This man despised small coasters, fishing smacks;

He scorned those sailors who at night and morn

Can see the coast, when in their little boats

They go a six days’ voyage and are back

Home with their wives for every Sabbath day.

Much did he talk of tankards of old beer,

And bottled stuff he drank in other lands,

Which was a liquid fire like Hell to gulp,

But Paradise to sip.

And so he talked;

Nor did those people listen with more awe

To Lazarus—whom they had seen stone dead—

Than did we urchins to that seaman’s voice.

He many a tale of wonder told; of where,

At Argostoli, Cephalonia’s sea

Ran over the earth’s lip in heavy floods;

And then again of how the strange Chinese

Conversed much as our homely Blackbirds sing.

He told us how he sailed in one old ship

Near that volcano Martinique, whose power

Shook like dry leaves the whole Caribbean seas;

And made the Sun set in a sea of fire

Which only half was his; and dust was thick

On deck, and stones were pelted at the mast.