Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. ON AN ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP, by EDWARD CARPENTER



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. ON AN ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Mid-ocean, night
Last Line: Light sways slowly.
Subject(s): Sea; Ships & Shipping; Steamboats; Tourists; Travel; United States - Immigration & Emigtration; Ocean; Journeys; Trips


MID-OCEAN, night—
The spars loom square and black against the sky, and the mast-head light
sways slowly.

I hear as in a dream the never-ending lullaby, the continued surge of water
off the bows, the vibration and smothered pulse of the engines.

Deep in the bowels of the great ship, half-naked huge-limbed grimy-eyed
sweating, the firemen tend their thirty-six fires.
From time to time one slips on deck to enjoy the cool;
He lights his pipe. The moon along the high ridge of a pitch-black mass of
cloud steals, peering over fitfully on the silent gulfs.

The ship glides on and on. Oily-surfaced heaves and sways the deep as far
as eye can see.
Eight bells strike. The watch changes.
One bell—two bells. The deck is almost deserted. And still the ship
glides on and on—the deep sways slightly rustling;
The look-out man in the bows cries 'All is well'—and the lamps are
brightly burning.

2

In the morning as usual the deck is alive with passengers
[The great ocean-plains swelling sparkling for hundreds, thousands, of
miles round us, the visible circle unbroken by island or any object]—
Of all nations languages degrees, of various habits trades traditions,
Strangers to each other and to the water—they look with curious eyes
upon the novel scene.

An elderly Indian civilian, saloon-passenger, in grey check morning suit
and tennis shoes, blameless and wealthy, looks down with curious eyes from the
rail of the upper deck upon the crowded emigrant groups;
He turns to draw the attention of the young lady standing beside him.
It is a strange and varied scene—the sparkling waters, the rigging and
cordage, the children in red hoods playing on the sunny deck, the basking
groups, some playing cards, some smoking, chatting—the silent companionless
ones, pensive far-away-looking over the waves;
The Irish, mostly sitting or reclining in knots, young and old, men and
women, in gay colors, resting their heads on each other or wrapped in pairs
under one shawl—joking laughing kissing screaming slapping;
Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Norwegians, Laplanders, Swedes—some with
red shirts and jack-boots, boys with concertinas and pipes, rosy Dutch girls,
and mothers with tribes of children.
Here walking up and down with their brother three English girls, fresh and
bright as daisies—on their way to join their parents in the West;
Here a little lady from Dublin with clear low voice singing to a circle of
companions;
There in a corner by himself unnoticed among the rest, in low musical chant
by the hour reciting praying, sits an old Russian Jew.
Greybeard, with veined forehead, a tailor by trade—his son-in-law has
sent for him to Texas;
Through Hamburg and Hull and Liverpool he has traveled, eating no Gentile
food but dry bread.
The Hebrew text lies before him—but he knows it by memory mostly;
Prayers for the day he recites ["Abraham taught the morning prayer and
Isaac the afternoon and Jacob the evening prayer"]—
Prayers for the captain and for the crew and the passengers and for all
sea-travelers ["prayers for self alone God will not hear"]—
Prayers against storm, shipwreck, disease and famine, and all dangers of
the deep—not forgetting the warning of Jonah; and for each man's ruach
against the ruach of the ocean; and against the changes of clime and time—
All these he recites, sitting alone with his thoughts amid strangers.

It is a strange and varied scene.
The dark passion-eyed little Irish devil of a New York saloon-keeper with
his blasphemous stories and unscrupulous confessions—takes it in from his
point of view;
The long-headed long-twinkling-eyed elderly woman in her print hood,
helpful and receptive, with broad mouth—enjoyer of jokes, not easily
shocked—takes it in also from hers;
The gold-miner with slouch hat and easy dress leans with his back against
the bulwarks—he has seen it all twice before;
He has been home just now to Cornwall to visit his wife and children, and
is off again to the mountains of Idaho. By his side stands his
seventeen-year-old son, silent, clear-eyed, loving well his father.
The cheerful elderly spinster brings her camp-stool on deck and chats to a
companion—laughing hysterically over her own fears, and how she pushed
against the side of her berth in the night when it was rough, to steady the
rolling ship!
The American horse-dealer (he is bringing over some cart-horses from
England) walks up and down—grey-eyed, with decisive chin and lips, easy
careless sociable and 'cute.
Under the awning aft by the saloon gangway an elderly and well-to-do matron
and her two daughters recline in easy chairs; the lean grey-haired ship's
purser, proud of his gentlemanly manners, stops as he passes to say a few words
to them;
And the ship glides on and on—the water breaks from the bows,
The spars stand square and black against the sky, and the masts away to and
fro slowly.

3

What a scene!
Here in this hollow cup a thousand souls floating on the unmeasured
deep—
A little dust of humanity gathered at random on the shores of one
continent, to be tossed at random to the winds of another.

The young clerk with wife and babe, from London, going out to try his
fortune at farming in Manitoba:
The great big-boned steerage steward, so kindly to the children and
sensible—native of Rome, proud of his Latin origin, member of the Carbonari
and imprisoned by Austrians in his time—now serving out treacle and bread
and butter to emigrants;
The spruce first-cabin waiters and brawny slipshod humored crew,
The cooks, officers, the clean red-whiskered little captain on the bridge,
the smug decent doctor, the oily-jacketed look-out behind his screen in the
bows;
The taking of observations at breakfast time and again at noon, the sun's
limbs brought down to the horizon—the logarithms and tables, the charts and
the log;
The long heave and gasp of the engines, the gulls slow floating behind or
darting after waste slops;
The huge side of the ship, an iron wall 170 yards long to the waves, the
flowers mirrors gilt and velvet of the valoon, the piano, the gossip, the
elegant dinner, the mutual advances and recognitions, the parson who consents to
read service on Sunday, the philanthropist interested in gutter children, the
two self-possessed American girls, the young Englishmen doing the great tour;
The bare sanded boards of the steerage cabins, the crowded emigrant meals,
the swinging watercan and electric lamp, the stretched arms with mugs and
plates;
The berths with hundreds of sleepers at night, the family groups during the
day;
The father, awkward and ox-like, with nine motherless children, caring for
their little wants—the women pityingly helping him;
The narrow-eyed pale young basket-maker reading his Bible in his berth all
day; the Lancashire laddie and his pals singing salvation-comics at meal-times;
The military-got-up old fellow (years and years ago he was in the regulars)
so clean and spruce—brushing his boots carefully every morning; the little
boy of twelve traveling all by himself, petted by the cook and peeling potatos
for bits of dainties;
The love-making, bible-reading, card-playing, singing—the women sewing
or washing baby-linen;
The captain's cabin, with charts and glasses, the crew's quarters in the
forecastle—men smoking in their bunks—the stoke-hole, the bar, the
engine-room;
The warm evenings with renewals of animation—
Jingles of music in the cabins, hymns and comic songs and dances on deck to
the accordion;
The inquisitive-eyed priest, the same that read the service, looking out
from the saloon door—peering fleshly at the better-looking boys and girls;
At dusk the crew running among the women-passengers—firemen, cabin and
deck-hands—fingering and fooling; the women enjoying;
The incorrigible nigger cook's boy, with muscular developed frame,
protruding his great lips at the girls and then drawing them back with a grin
showing huge rows of white teeth;
The mean pudding-faced Swedish lad and Irish woman spitting at each
other—with no other language in common;
The sickness, the smells, the refuse meat swept from floors and tables and
thrown in bucketfuls overboard;
The coarse half-smothered lust, the gluttony and waste of food;
And the great ship gliding on and on—in her course pointed by the
earth-pole and the stars and the sun—
The spars standing square and black against the sky, and the mast-head
light swaying slowly.

4

The evening before last the water was oily-calm, floating blue flecked with
yellow up to the western horizon.
Behind, the track of the great ship lay like white lace, with ridgy waves
thrown off and rustling as they receded on each side; in the distance brooding
the dappled clouds hovered 'twixt sky and sea—dove-color and grey and heavy
with unformed rain.

After sunset there was preaching and singing forward on deck
One or two ladies from the saloon distributed tracts, some from the
steerage joined in praying, and called upon the Lord for safety during the
voyage.
Quite a little crowd got round, some earnest, some jeering, some quiet
spectators—(the cabin-boys mostly dancing in pairs round the corner in time
to the hymns).
All the while the great masts kept swaying slowly to and fro in the
sky—as though never moving forward from their place—the huge vault
rising enormous with dappled moonlit clouds in the east;
While from the west the faint daylight still shone upon the worshipers, and
the sound of their music melted and died on the vast sea-bosom.

Later on, when the deck was almost deserted—All faintest dove-grey and
silver, the gleaming water passing up without distinction into the gleaming sky,
with moon behind the clouds—
All one hue, in faintest silent perpetual movement like no earthly scene,
Immaterial, transfigured, the huge wash of ocean two miles deep lying so
calm below—
The moonlit ocean of air unsuspected above the clouds—suspended
between—
Gliding on and on, as in a mirror or a dream..

All so calm, large, undisturbed, vast in extent and power: the sea
stretching out to the touch of the air—miles, hundreds, thousands of
miles—
The sympathetic answer of the floating cloud-layer to the floating heaving
water-layer below ...

I saw a vision of my own intimate passing out over the waters, and between
them and the clouds—the vessel going on and leaving us—
Liberated, identified, all pain stript off and left with the husk
behind—senses of enjoyment strangely widened, lifted—
Moving on at will, passing along the waters, the slow air—catching the
faint scent, the whispers, the coherent incoherent words,
The marvelous calm, peace, grandeur, vastness, the incommunicable joy—

Entering into it, and being at rest.

5

In the morning all was changed again.
Drizzly and grizzly chopped the grey water with leaden clouds and rain: the
horizon was a circle of mist;
Coldly and flabbily the passengers looked out upon the world.

Sullen like a marble cliff just tinged with blue, a huge slab a quarter
mile long and eighty feet rising over the water,
Scored, festooned, beetling, with cavernous hollows washed by the sea,
With mist trailing to leeward of it, and thin mist passing over its white
flat top, with white fragments dotting the sea around it—
Sullen silent and lonely a great iceberg floated by.

For a few minutes the passengers were roused, and crowded the side of the
vessel—some of the firemen running up from the stoke hole to have a look.
But presently like bees stupefied with cold they dispersed to their cabins
and to sleep, and the deck was clear again

6

To-day, bright and fresh, with new warmth, as it were wafted from the
approaching land—all is gay and cheerful.
The deep inky-blue of mid-ocean yields to a lighter tint, and the waves
break merrily into flashes of turquoise light crowned with foam.
Six narrow-winged gulls pass by—flying low, serpentine—hunting
across the water;
Every now and then shoals of porpoises appear—hundred at a
time—playing splashing swimming alongside, towards the wind, leaping
half-a-dozen together out of the water—
[Bounding three or four yards, with evident enjoyment and commotion at the
sight of the ship—their sharp back fins and divided horizontal tails
plainly visible;]
Then a whale is seen spouting, or a fleet of Portuguese men of war drifts
by, rose-color and blue—or a real ship is sighted and spoken with.

So the day speeds on; and pleasant is basking on the sunny deck, and
pleasant the new companionships and the confidences; and the food tastes sweet,
and the air has a breath of land in it, as of most distant hayfields; and hope
and expectation range high;
And the evening falls, and late on into the warm night the clustered
wanderers on the fore-deck sing the songs of the old country,
While the spars loom square and black against the stars, and the mast-head
light sways slowly.





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