ing.
Then one or two of those nearest to us put up their hands to get
silence. Sambo's fiddle was singing (as only voices and fiddles can
sing) a melody to which the heads and toes of the company soon began to
nod and beat:
"La, l[)e] l[=a] la la, la la la, l[=a] l[)e] la, la
L[=a], le l[=a] la la, la la la, la--l[)e] la la,"
hummed the boatswain. "Lor' bless me, Mr. O'Moore, I heard that afore
you were born, though I'm blessed if I know where. But it's a genteel
pretty thing!"
"It's all about roses and nightingales!" shouted Dennis, with comical
grimaces.
"Hear! hear!" answered the oldest and hairiest-looking of the sailors,
and the echoes of his approbation only died away to let the song begin.
Then the notes of Sambo's fiddle also dropped off, and I heard Dennis
O'Moore's beautiful voice for the first time as he gave his head one
desperate toss and began:
"There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the night long.
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song."
One by one the pipes were rested on the smokers' knees; they wanted
their mouths to hear with. I don't think the assembled company can have
looked much like exiles from flowery haunts of the nightingale, but we
all shook our heads, not only in time but in sympathy, as the clear
voice rose to a more passionate strain:
"That bower and its music I never forget;
But oft when alone in the bloom of the year,
I think--is the nightingale singing there yet?
Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer?"
I and the oldest and hairiest sailor were sighing like furnaces as the
melody recommenced with the second verse:
"No, the roses soon withered that hung o'er the wave,
But some blossoms were gathered while freshly they shone,
And a dew was distilled from their flowers, that gave
All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone."
If making pot-pourri after my mother's old family recipe had been the
chief duty of able-bodied seamen, this could not have elicited more nods
of approbation. But we listened spell-bound and immovable to the passion
and pathos with which the singer poured forth the conclusion of his
song:
"Thus memory draws from delight, ere it dies,
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