Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MINED, by JOEL T. ROGERS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MINED, by                    
First Line: Wearily, wearily, crawled the ship
Last Line: As a woman shakes her hair.
Subject(s): Battleships; Death; Fights; Sailing & Sailors; Dead, The


WEARILY, wearily, crawled the ship,
And a small, slow wind made smooth her path
Moving the ocean to the lip
Of heaven, where the two worlds' swath
Was purple, though the heaven's tip
Was brass and bright as wrath.
No foeman went upon that sea,
And the deeps of the yellow air
Where three black gulls winged aimlessly
Were desolate and blindly bare.
But still the wind went to the lee
And the blue waves were fair.

The brass upon the ship's white deck
Gleamed loudly as a thousand suns.
Her prow was bold. No single fleck
Darkened her cloudy sides, where tons
Of water felt the iron check.
Most stern shone her gray guns.

A thousand men upon her boards
Went bravely forth and back and in.
Shifting the wheel her battle lords
Stared at the sea they hoped to win.
As the most sheering steel of swords
Her course was straight and thin.

"This thing is dull," the Lieutenant swore,
And smoothed his curls, and set his coat.
"Brave men are dying on the shore
While we crawl with the crawling boat.
Give me the rifle's song once more,
The drum, the bugle's note!"

"England is fair," the Lieutenant said,
"And she I love is all delight.
Do these our standards gleam so red
They are afraid to come and fight?"
But the Captain watched the sea ahead
And thought of the dark night.

No foeman went upon that sea,
Nor in the vaults of the bright air,
But the lookout felt all suddenly
The bottoms of the deep upflare
And her steel bow shiver in three,
And her strong bulkheads tear.

"Now know we death," the Captain thought,
"For we have struck a skulking mine.
A better time we might have sought
Fighting with brave ships in the line.
Now many battles are unfought
Beneath our battle sign."

A thousand strong men crowded aft,
For her bow bent to the purple wave.
And some got sticks to make a raft,
And some, whose hearts and limbs were brave,
Looked on the sea and idly laughed
To watch the white surge lave.

"Now know we death," the Captain said,
"For we have struck a skulking mine."
And each man thought of hours long dead,
Of unkissed lips and undrunk wine.
But the ship dropped downward at the head.
And the sea was black with brine.

"England is fair," the Lieutenant cried,
"And she I love is all delight.
It would be well could we abide
To perish for them in the fight,
Than in this seething, sullen tide
Knowing the bitter night."

The swift sea struck her on her keel,
And rived in shards her iron decks,
And burst her plates of welded steel
Like wormy pine beneath the axe.
And the deep gulfs snatched her by the heel
Down to the grave of wrecks.

No foeman went upon that sea,
And the caverns of the yellow air
Where three black gulls ringed aimlessly
Were desolate and blindly bare.
And a sharp wave shook the white spume free
As a woman shakes her hair.





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