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_Messmates_

He gave us all a good-bye cheerily
At the first dawn of day;
We dropped him down the side full drearily
When the light died away.
It's a dead dark watch that he's a-keeping there,
And a long, long night that lags a-creeping there,
Where the Trades and the tides roll over him
And the great ships go by.

He's there alone with green seas rocking him
For a thousand miles round;
He's there alone with dumb things mocking him,
And we're homeward bound.
It's a long, lone watch that he's a-keeping there,
And a dead cold night that lags a-creeping there,
While the months and the years roll over him
And the great ships go by.

I wonder if the tramps come near enough
As they thrash to and fro,
And the battle-ships' bells ring clear enough
To be heard down below;

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If through all the lone watch that he's a-keeping there,
And the long, cold night that lags a-creeping there,
The voices of the sailor-men shall comfort him
When the great ships go by.

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_The Death of Admiral Blake_

(AUGUST 7TH, 1657)

Laden with spoil of the South, fulfilled with the glory
of achievement,
And freshly crowned with never-dying fame,
Sweeping by shores where the names are the names of the
victories of England,
Across the Bay the squadron homeward came.

Proudly they came, but their pride was the pomp of a
funeral at midnight,
When dreader yet the lonely morrow looms;
Few are the words that are spoken, and faces are gaunt
beneath the torchlight
That does but darken more the nodding plumes.

Low on the field of his fame, past hope lay the Admiral
triumphant,
And fain to rest him after all his pain;
Yet for the love that he bore to his own land, ever
unforgotten,
He prayed to see the western hills again.

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Fainter than stars in a sky long gray with the coming of
the daybreak,
Or sounds of night that fade when night is done,
So in the death-dawn faded the splendour and loud
renown of warfare,
And life of all its longings kept but one.

"Oh! to be there for an hour when the shade draws in
beside the hedgerows,
And falling apples wake the drowsy noon:
Oh! for the hour when the elms grow sombre and
human in the twilight,
And gardens dream beneath the rising moon.

"Only t