How It Seemed to Us

1. A grey flat lying out against the sea,

2. Where the strait guts are choked with weeded wood

3. And tangled cordage, moving aimlessly

4. Upon the lazy leaden ebb or flood –

5. A waste of stunted gorze and withered tree,

6. Warped by a wind that chills the running blood

7. And crisps the slime masked puddles in the mud

8. A place of desolation verily!

9. But yet this place is dearer to us two

10. Than any other spot we know on earth –

11. The North wind ushered in our passion's birth,

12. When by the waste my heart went out to you.

13. And the blind tide at ebb crawled back again

14. To scatter golden spume flakes at our feet,

15. And hail us – who had served a time of pain

16. And being free, had found deliverance sweet.

A Voyage

1. Our galley chafes against the Quay,

2. The full tide calls us from the beach

3. While far away across the sea

4. Is set the isle that we would reach

5. The haven where we fain would be.

1. Let us go forward – doubting not –

2. Into the grey waste flecked with foam

3. Adventurers that have no spot

4. So dear that they should call it home –

5. Lone men, of all men most forgot

1. Grim men, with some deep hidden sin,

2. About their bosom, haggard eyes

3. That shew the bitter soul within

4. Warped by a thousand miseries

5. Pale men, with drawn white lips and thin.

1. Old men, that lose their faith in good,

2. And so take service recklessly

3. In any strife by land or flood,

4. Wherever evil chance to be,

5. Prodigal of their life's last blood

1. Young faces, very old with woe,

2. Strong men, in evil stronger still

3. These make our crew and so we go

4. Climbing each shifting waterhill

5. That heaves us upward from below.

1. Our galley lamps are bright with hope,

2. Our voices ring across the sea

3. In other lands is wider scope

4. For all our virile energy

5. Let be the past, leave we the quay

6. With firm hands on the tiller rope