The Exiles' Line
Now the new year reviving old desires,
The restless soul to open sea aspires,
Where the Blue Peter flickers from the fore,
And the grimed stoker feeds the engine-fires.
Coupons, alas, depart with all their rows,
And last year's sea-met loves where Grindley knows;
But still the wild wind wakes off Gardafui,
And hearts turn eastward with the P. and O's.
Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less -
Oh slothful mother of much idleness,
Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed!
Nay, bear us gently! Wherefore need we press?
The Tragedy of all our East is laid
On those white decks beneath the awning shade -
Birth, absence, longing, laughter, love and tears,
And death unmaking ere the land is made.
And midnight madnesses of souls distraught
Whom the cool seas call through the open port,
So that the table lacks one place next morn,
And for one forenoon men forego their sport.
The shadow of the rigging to and fro
Sways, shifts, and flickers on the spar-deck's snow,
And like a giant trampling in his chains,
The screw-blades gasp and thunder deep below;
And, leagued to watch one flying-fish's wings,
Heaven stoops to sea, and sea to Heaven clings;
While, bent upon the ending of his toil,
The hot sun strides, regarding not these things:
For the same wave that meets our stem in spray
Bore Smith of Asia eastward yesterday,
And Delhi Jones and Brown of Midnapore
To-morrow follow on the self-same way.
Linked in the chain of Empire one by one,
Flushed with long leave, or tanned with many a sun,
The Exiles' Line brings out the exiles line
And ships them homeward when their work is done.
Yea, heedless of the shuttle through the loom,
The flying keels fulfil the web of doom.
Sorrow or shouting; what is that to them?
Make out the cheque that pays for cabin room!
And how so many score of times ye flit
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poem by Rudyard Kipling
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