William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Mariners

MEN who have loved the ships they took to sea,

Loved the tall masts, the prows that creamed with foam,

Have learned, deep in their hearts, how it might be

That there is yet a dearer thing than home.

The decks they walk, the rigging in the stars,

The clean boards counted in the watch they keep—

These, and the sunlight on the slippery spars,

Will haunt them ever, waking and asleep.

Ashore, these men are not as other men:

They walk as strangers through the crowded street,

Or, brooding by their fires, they hear again

The drone astern, where gurgling waters meet,

Or see again a wide and blue lagoon,

And a lone ship that rides there with the moon.

Harper’s Magazine