A Boat Comes In

Although I shall not see his face
For the low riding of the ship,
The three armorial oak-leaves on his cloak
Will be enough.
But what if I make a mistake
And call to the wrong man?
Or make no sign at all,
And it is he?

Japanese Street Song.

Edward Powys Mathers

Edward Powys Mathers was an English translator and poet, best known for translating the French Orientalist J.C. Mardrus's translation of 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night' in 1923. In addition to translations, Powys Mathers was an influential figure in the realm of cryptic crosswords, devising some of the most challenging puzzles for 'The Observer'. His translations have been lauded for their literary beauty and for introducing English-speaking audiences to classic Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry.

Edward Powys Mathers

Grief And The Sleeve

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

Envoy In Autumn

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

I Asked My Love

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

A Single Night

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

English

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Invitation

The chief flower
Of the plum-tree of this isle
Opens to-night....
Come, singing to the moon,
In the third watch.

From the Japanese of a Courtesan of Nagasaki.

Edward Powys Mathers

Drink Song

The crows have wakened me
By cawing at the moon.
I pray that I shall not think of him;
I pray so intently
That he begins to fill my whole mind.
This is getting on my nerves;
I wonder if there is any of that wine left.

Japanese Street Song.

Edward Powys Mathers

The Shadow Boatswain

Don't you know the sailing orders?
It is time to put to sea,
And the stranger in the harbor
Sends a boat ashore for me.

With the thunder of her canvas
Coming on the wind again,
I can hear the Shadow Boatswain
Piping to his shadow men.

Is it firelight or morning,
That red flicker on the floor?
Your good-by was braver, sweetheart,
When I sailed away before.

Think of this last lovely summer!
Love, what ails the wind to-night?
What's he saying in the chimney
Turns your berry cheek so white?

What a morning! How the sunlight
Sparkles on the outer bay,
Where the brig lies waiting for me
To trip anchor and away!

That's the Doomkeel. You may know her
By her clean run aft; and, then,
Don't you hear the Shadow B...

Bliss Carman

The Hayswater Boat

A region desolate and wild,
Black, chafing water: and afloat,
And lonely as a truant child
In a waste wood, a single boat:
No mast, no sails are set thereon;
It moves, but never moveth on:
And welters like a human thing
Amid the wild waves weltering.

Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,
Far down the torrent cleaves its way:
In front the dumb rock rises steep,
A fretted wall of blue and grey;
Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone
With many a wild weed overgrown:
All else, black water: and afloat,
One rood from shore, that single boat.

Last night the wind was up and strong;
The grey-streakd waters labour still:
The strong blast brought a pigmy throng
From that mild hollow in the hill;
From those twin brooks, that beached strand
...

Matthew Arnold

The Englishman

I met a sailor in the woods,
    A silver ring wore he,
His hair hung black, his eyes shone blue,
    And thus he said to me: -

'What country, say, of this round earth,
    What shore of what salt sea,
Be this, my son, I wander in,
    And looks so strange to me?'

Says I, 'O foreign sailorman,
    In England now you be,
This is her wood, and this her sky,
    And that her roaring sea.'

He lifts his voice yet louder,
    'What smell be this,' says he,
'My nose on the sharp morning air
    Snuffs up so greedily?'

Says I, 'It is wild roses
    Do smell so winsomely,
And winy briar too,' says I,
    'That in these thickets be.'

'And oh!' says he, 'what leetle bird
    Is singing in yon high tree,
So every...

Walter De La Mare

The Boatman Of Kinsale.

Air--An Cota Caol.


I.

His kiss is sweet, his word is kind,
His love is rich to me;
I could not in a palace find
A truer heart than he.
The eagle shelters not his nest
From hurricane and hail,
More bravely than he guards my breast--
The Boatman of Kinsale.


II.

The wind that round the Fastnet sweeps
Is not a whit more pure--
The goat that down Cnoc Sheehy leaps
Has not a foot more sure.
No firmer hand nor freer eye
E'er faced an autumn gale--
De Courcy's heart is not so high--
The Boatman of Kinsale.


III.

The brawling squires may heed him not,
The dainty stranger sneer--
But who will dare to hurt our cot
When Myles O'Hea is here?
The scarlet soldiers pass along;<...

Thomas Osborne Davis