Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
The Derelict
I
Till the sea rose beneath my feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
Into his pits he stamped my crew,
Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.
Is to my maker still,
Whom now the currents con, the rollers steer—
Lifting forlorn to spy
Trailed smoke along the sky,
Falling afraid lest any keel come near!
Wried, dried, and split and burst,
Bone-bleached my decks, wind-scoured to the graining;
And, jarred at every roll,
The gear that was my soul
Answers the anguish of my beams’ complaining.
Gangs of the prying gull
That shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches.
For roar that dumbed the gale,
My hawse-pipes’ guttering wail,
Sobbing my heart out through the uncounted watches.
Through all my points I swing—
Swing and return to shift the sun anew.
Blind in my well-known sky
I hear the stars go by,
Mocking the prow that cannot hold one true.
Wave after wave in wrath
Frets ’gainst his fellow, warring where to send me.
Flung forward, heaved aside,
Witless and dazed I bide
The mercy of the comber that shall end me.
The spray of seas unseen
Smokes round my head and freezes in the falling.
South where the corals breed,
The footless, floating weed
Folds me and fouls me, strake on strake upcrawling.
My race against the sun—
Strength on the deep—am bawd to all disaster;
Whipped forth by night to meet
My sister’s careless feet,
And with a kiss betray her to my master.
Is to my maker still—
To him and his, our peoples at their pier:
Lifting in hope to spy
Trailed smoke along the sky,
Falling afraid lest any keel come near!