RE: Poetry or prose?

Great post, I am reading Sea of Glory (an account of the Continental Navy)
and I am a sucker for Age of Sail fiction (Forester's HornBlower, Kent's
Bolitho, Lamdin's Lewery, Nelson's Biddlecomb etc). Anything nautical with
tall ships is by definition poetry, the swell rolls in rhythm even when
there is a chop in the Channel after rounding the Lizard.
 
What do they Here? They travel upon green and blue, nothing is sweeter than
a land breeze after a fortnight or more at sea and nothing quickens the
pulse as the tempest driving the waves onto a leeward shore. Where the one
ends the other begins. John O. would you like some copies of my memos and
paving logs for your reading pleasure? Let me know what you decide.
 
Daniel

Circumnambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.
Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip,
and from thence, by Whitehall, northward.

What do you see?

Posted like silent sentinels
all around the town
stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men
fixed in ocean reveries.

Some leaning against the spiles;
some seated upon their pierheads;
some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China;
some high aloft in the rigging,
      as if trying to get still a better seaward peep.

But these are all landsmen;
of week days pent up in lath and plaster --
tied to counters,
nailed to benches,
clinched to desks.

How then is this?

Are the green fields gone?

What do they here?

***************************************************

Circumnambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears
Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you
see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town stand thousands upon
thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the
spiles; some seated upon their pierheads; some looking over the bulwarks of
ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if trying to get still
a better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in
lath and plaster -- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

Why decide?

--John

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Received on Mon Jun 30 18:14:03 2003