Christmas at Sea
The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could
stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.
They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go
about.
All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and
the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further
forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.
We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race
roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close
aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running
high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his
eye.
The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore
home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed
out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.
The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial
cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the
year)
This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where
I was born.
O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the
shelves.
And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to
sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas
Day.
They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
'All hands to loose topgallant sails,' I heard the captain call.
'By the Lord, she'll never stand it,' our first mate, Jackson,
cried.
... 'It's the one way or the other, Mr Jackson,' he replied.
She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and
good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as thought she
understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.
And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but
me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were
growing old.
Suspending my anxiety about rhyming poetry in ballad metre (where tweeness gathers ripe, like a load of fresh cut tripe), I read this poem several times through. Just now I read it aloud to myself. Twice. And I must say it really is quite beautiful.
Here are four things I like about it:
1. The grand and effortless way it moves between different settings: from the epic immensity of a ship on a storm-tossed sea to the folksy familiarity of a coastguard in his garden to the intimacy of a fire-lit living room ... and back again.
2. Its tantalising 'gaps': Why did the narrator go to sea?; Why was he a 'shadow on the household'?; What business did the (presumably) merchant vessel have so close to his birthplace?; Why Christmas day?; Did any of the other seamen know of his familial connection?
3. Its slightly unexpected metaphors - such as in "the ship smelt up to windward", "the chimneys volleyed out" and "cleared the weary headland".
4. Its melancholic atmosphere. At last light and sailing clear of the heads, the other seamen were relieved to be free, finally, of the day's toil and peril. But the narrator was thinking only of the little village where he was born - that he passed on this Christmas morn so close he could hear it and smell it. Of leaving home and of his parents growing old.
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