Quotes about rigging, page 6
Chatter Chief of Staff Application 1331 after William Shakespeare, Hamlet's Soliloquy
To verse, or role reverse, that's in the question,
when writer's block may cause some indigestion,
[with contests tougher then the going's rougher]
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the strings and sorrows of outrageous scribblers,
the binges of obsessional dribblers,
the noisy cutters' red, black, unread bubbles:
or to take arms against such teething troubles
and by opposing, end them? Still keep one's cool,
guide, bona fide, and gladly suffer fools?
There's surely something wrong in A.P. rules
when talent's topsy-turvy turned by ghouls,
ability's terms of reference unsustained.
Here trophy credibility must be regained.
For here are pressing claims and urgent needs,
though many try, scarce one percent succeeds,
and one percent of these may save their soul
as contest pressures take their toll
of high ideals, oft leaving empty shell
[...] Read more
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Sing Along To The Song Of The Sea
Sing along, sing along to the song of the sea
In the wash of white, wild weather’s wave,
As it gushes galore
Onto strand’s silver shore,
Like a ghost from a galleon’s grave.
Sing along, sing along to the song of the sea
In the shout of coarse cannon’s rough roar
That rang round Britain’s bays
In Drake’s drum’s finest days,
When England and Spain went to war.
Sing along, sing along to the song of the sea
In the piping aboard of massed men,
As brave sailors set sail,
Swearing never to fail
If England is threatened again.
Sing along, sing along to the song of the sea
In the murmur of muttering crew
[...] Read more
poem by C. Richard Miles
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Koening Of The River
Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
coated with coal dust. Staying aboard, he saw, up
in a thick meadow, a sand-colored mule,
untethered, with no harness, and no signs
of habitation round the ruined factory wheel
locked hard in rust, and through whose spokes the vines
of wild yam leaves leant from overweight;
the wild bananas in the yellowish sunlight
were dugged like aching cows with unmilked fruit.
This was the last of the productive mines.
Only the vegetation here looked right.
A crab of pain scuttled shooting up his foot
and fastened on his neck, at the brain's root.
He felt his reason curling back like parchment
in this fierce torpor. Well, he no longer taxed
and tired what was left of his memory;
he should thank heaven he had escaped the sea,
[...] Read more
poem by Derek Walcott
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The Merchant Ship
The Sun o’er the waters was throwing
In the freshness of morning its beams;
And the breast of the ocean seemed glowing
With glittering silvery streams:
A bark in the distance was bounding
Away for the land on her lee;
And the boatswain’s shrill whistle resounding
Came over and over the sea.
The breezes blew fair and were guiding
Her swiftly along on her track,
And the billows successively passing,
Were lost in the distance aback.
The sailors seemed busy preparing
For anchor to drop ere the night;
The red rusted cables in fathoms
Were haul’d from their prisons to light.
Each rope and each brace was attended
By stout-hearted sons of the main,
Whose voices, in unison blended,
Sang many a merry-toned strain.
[...] Read more
poem by Henry Kendall
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The Battle of the Nile
'Twas on the 18th of August in the year of 1798,
That Nelson saw with inexpressible delight
The City of Alexandria crowded with the ships of France,
So he ordered all sail to be set, and immediately advance.
And upon the deck, in deep anxiety he stood,
And from anxiety of mind he took but little food;
But now he ordered dinner and prepared without delay,
Saying, I shall gain a peerage to-morrow, or Westminster Abbey.
The French had found it impossible to enter the port of Alexandria,
Therefore they were compelled to withdraw;
Yet their hearts were burning with anxiety the war to begin,
But they couldn't find a pilot who would convey them safely in.
Therefore Admiral Brueyes was forced to anchor in Aboukir Bay,
And in a compact line of battle, the leading vessel lay
Close to a shoal, along a line of very deep water,
There they lay, all eager to begin the murderous slaughter.
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poem by William Topaz McGonagall
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Chatter Chief Of Staff Application 1331 After William Shakespeare Hamlet's Soliloquy
To verse, or role reverse, that's in the question,
when writer's block may cause some indigestion -
[with contests tougher then the going's rougher] -
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the strings and sorrows of outrageous scribblers,
the binges of obsessional dribblers,
the noisy cutters' red, black, unread bubbles:
or to take arms against such teething troubles
and by opposing, end them? Still keep one's cool,
guide, bona fide, and gladly suffer fools?
There's surely something wrong in A.P. rules
when talent's topsy-turvy turned by ghouls,
when terms of reference ability are not retained.
Here trophy credibility must be regained.
For here are pressing claims and urgent needs,
though many try, scarce one percent succeeds -
and one percent of these may save their soul
as contest pressures take their toll
of high ideals, oft leaving empty shell
[...] Read more
poem by Jonathan Robin
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The Rhyme Of The Three Captains
. . . At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,
And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall,
And he was Captain of the Fleet -- the bravest of them all.
Their good guns guarded their great gray sides
that were thirty foot in the sheer,
When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer.
Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze,
Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas.
Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled,
And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.
"I ha' paid Port dues for your Law," quoth he, "and where is the Law ye boast
If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast?
Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk,
We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;
I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare
Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.
There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore,
[...] Read more
poem by Rudyard Kipling
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The Revenge - A Ballad of the Fleet
I
AT Flores, in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a flutter’d bird, came flying from far away;
“Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!”
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: “’Fore God I am no coward;
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,
And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?”
II
Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: “I know you are no coward;
You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.
But I’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.”
III
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poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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The Last of the Narwhale
THE STORY OF AN ARCTIC NIP.
AY, ay, I'll tell you, shipmates,
If you care to hear the tale,
How myself and the royal yard alone
Were left of the old Narwhale.
'A stouter ship was never launched
Of all the Clyde-built whalers;
And forty years of a life at sea
Haven't matched her crowd of sailors.
Picked men they were, all young and strong,
And used to the wildest seas,
From Donegal and the Scottish coast,
And the rugged Hebrides.
Such men as women cling to, mates,
Like ivy round their lives:
And the day we sailed, the quays were lined
With weeping mothers and wives.
They cried and prayed, and we gave 'em a cheer,
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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7 Days on the Sea
Monday
The world is a ball of water.
See, it is round-sided.
I move across its topside,
upon the world, not in it.
The boat is a comb, acomb over idle
white hair.
Waves grow on a round skull
uncountable.
Sea, it is round-sided.
Fog is building a vessel.
Sea is the butt of a bottle.
Boat bobs in the center.
At the V
of the stern standing,
I see below me sea,
ceiling of fog, see
the round horizon, sea
tears on my cheeks. I see
through globes of tears
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poem by May Swenson
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