To Maurice Hewlett

        HEWLETT! as ship to ship
        Let us the ensign dip.
        There may be who despise
        For dross our merchandise,
        Our balladries, our bales
            Of woven tales;
        Yet, Hewlett, the glad gales
        Favonian! And what spray
        Our dolphins toss'd in play,
Full in old Triton's beard, on Iris' shimmering veils!

        Scant tho' the freight of gold
        Commercial in our hold,
        Pæstum, Eridanus
        Perchance have barter'd us
    'Bove chrematistic care

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, born on November 21, 1863, and died on May 12, 1944, was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name Q. His legacy includes a vast body of critical and anthological work, most notably 'The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1900'. Quiller-Couch was knighted in 1910 and also served as a professor of English at the University of Cambridge. His works have influenced many, including writers like Virginia Woolf.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Alma Mater

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

The Statues And The Tear

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

Twilight.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Merchandise

& Eisie April

Dedicated, by gracious permission, to H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES

Merchandise! Merchandise! Tortoiseshell, spices,
Carpets and Indigo sent oer the highseas;
MotheroPearl from the Solomon Isles
Brought by a brigantine ten thousand miles.

Rubber from Zanzibar, tea from NangPo,
Copra from Haiti, and wine from Bordeaux;
Ships, with topgallants and royals unfurled,
Are bringing in freights from the ends of the world

Crazy old windjammers, manned by Malays,
With ratridden bulkheads and creaking old stays,
Reeking of bilge and of paint and of pitch
Thats how these oceangirt islands grew rich:

And tramps, heavy laden, and liners untold
Will lease a new life to a nation grown old.
Merchandise! Merchandise!...

John Milton Hayes

To A Ship. - Translations From Horace.

OD. i. 14.

Yet on fresh billows seaward wilt thou ride,
O ship? What dost thou? Seek a hav'n, and there
Rest thee: for lo! thy side
Is oarless all and bare,

And the swift south-west wind hath maimed thy mast,
And thy yards creak, and, every cable lost,
Yield must thy keel at last
On pitiless sea-waves tossed

Too rudely. Goodly canvas is not thine,
Nor gods, to hear thee now, when need is sorest:-
Though thou - a Pontic pine,
Child of a stately forest, -

Boastest high name and empty pedigree,
Pale seamen little trust the gaudy sail:
Stay, unless doomed to be
The plaything of the gale.

Flee - what of late sore burden was to me,
Now a sad memory and a bitter pain, -
Those shining Cyclads flee
That stud the far-off...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Laudabunt Alii

(After Horace)

Let others praise, as fancy wills,
    Berlin beneath her trees,
Or Rome upon her seven hills,
    Or Venice by her seas;
Stamboul by double tides embraced,
Or green Damascus in the waste.

For me there's nought I would not leave
    For the good Devon land,
Whose orchards down the echoing cleeve
    Bedewed with spray-drift stand,
And hardly bear the red fruit up
That shall be next year's cider-cup.

You too, my friend, may wisely mark
    How clear skies follow rain,
And, lingering in your own green park
    Or drilled on Laffan's Plain,
Forget not with the festal bowl
To soothe at times your weary soul.

When Drake must bid to Plymouth Hoe
    Good-bye for many a day,
And some were sad and feared ...

Henry John Newbolt

Gloucester Moors

        A mile behind is Gloucester town
        Where the fishing fleets put in,
        A mile ahead the land dips down
        And the woods and farms begin.
        Here, where the moors stretch free
        In the high blue afternoon,
        Are the marching sun and talking sea,
        And the racing winds that wheel and flee
        On the flying heels of June.

        Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue,
        Blue is the quaker-maid,
        The wild geranium holds its dew
        Long in the boulder's shade.
        Wax-red hangs the cup
        From the huckleberry boughs,
        In barberry bells the grey moths sup,
        Or where the choke-cherry lifts high up
        Sweet bowls for their carouse.

        Over the shel...

William Vaughn Moody

To A Friend

Here in the fairway
Fetching--foul of keel,
Long-stray but fortunate--
Out of the fogs, the vast
Atlantic solitudes.
Shall, by the hawser-pin
Waiting the signal
Leave--go--anchor!
Scent the familiar,
The unforgettable
Fragrance of home;
So in a long breath
Bless us unknowing:
Bless them, the violets,
Bless me, the gardener,
Bless thee, the giver.

Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

The Aeolian Harp

At The Surf Inn

List the harp in window wailing
Stirred by fitful gales from sea:
Shrieking up in mad crescendo--
Dying down in plaintive key!

Listen: less a strain ideal
Than Ariel's rendering of the Real.
What that Real is, let hint
A picture stamped in memory's mint.

Braced well up, with beams aslant,
Betwixt the continents sails the Phocion,
For Baltimore bound from Alicant.
Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck
Over the chill blue white-capped ocean:
From yard-arm comes--"Wreck ho, a wreck!"

Dismasted and adrift,
Longtime a thing forsaken;
Overwashed by every wave
Like the slumbering kraken;
Heedless if the billow roar,
Oblivious of the lull,
Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore,
It sw...

Herman Melville