Wha'll buy my caller herrin'?

They're no brought here without brave darin',

Buy my caller herrin',

Ye little ken their worth.

Wha'll buy my caller herrin'?

O ye may call them vulgar farin';
Wives and mithers, maist despairin',
Ca' them lives o' men.

Caller herrin', caller herrin'.

Lady Nairne.

The Poor Fisherman

HUS by himself compelled to live each day,
To wait for certain hours the tide's delay;
At the same time the same dull views to see,
The bounding marsh-bank and the blighted
tree;

The water only, when the tides were high,
When low, the mud half-covered and half-dry;
The sun-burnt tar that blisters on the planks,
And bank-side stakes in their uneven ranks;
Heaps of entangled weeds that slowly float,
As the tide rolls by the impeded boat.

When tides were neap, and in the sultry day
Through the tall bounding mud-banks made their way,
Which on each side rose swelling, and below
The dark warm flood ran silently and slow;
There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hide,
There hang his head, and view the lazy tide
In its hot slimy channel slowly glide.

Crabbe.

The Three Fishers

HREE fishers went sailing out into the West,
Out into the West as the sun went down;
Each thought on the woman who loved him
the best,

And the children stood watching them out
of the town:

For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbour bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse-tower,

And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down; They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower, And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown; But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbour bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands,

In the morning gleam as the tide went down, And the women are weeping and wringing their hands For those who will never come back to the town. For men must work, and women must weep, And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep; And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

Charles Kingsley.

The Fisher's Widow

HE boats go out and the boats come in
Under the wintry sky;

And the rain and foam are white in the wind,
And the white gulls cry.

She sees the sea when the wind is wild
Swept by the windy rain;

And her heart's a-weary of sea and land
As the long days wane.

She sees the torn sails fly in the foam,
Broad on the sky-line grey;

And the boats go out and the boats come in,
But there's one away.

Arthur Symons.

H

Messmates

E 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;

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.

Henry Newbolt.

"The Mariners sleep by the Sea"

T

HE mariners sleep by the sea.

The wild wind comes up from the sea,

It wails round the tower, and it blows through

the grasses,

It scatters the sand o'er the graves where it

passes,

And the sound and the scent of the sea.

The white waves beat up from the shore,

They beat on the church by the shore,

They rush round the grave-stones aslant to the leeward, And the wall and the mariners' graves lying seaward, That are banked with the stones from the shore.

For the huge sea comes up in the storm,

Like a beast from the lair of the storm,

To claim with its ravenous leap and to mingle
The mariners' bones with the surf and the shingle
That it rolls round the shore in the storm.

There is nothing beyond but the sky,

But the sea and the slow-moving sky,

Where a cloud from the grey lifts the gleam of its edges, Where the foam flashes white from the shouldering ridges,

As they crowd on the uttermost sky.

The mariners sleep by the sea.

Far away there's a shrine by the sea;

The pale women climb up the path to it slowly,
To pray to Our Lady of Storms ere they wholly
Despair of their men from the sea.

The children at play on the sand,

Where once from the shell-broidered sand

They would watch for the sails coming in from far places,
Are forgetting the ships and forgetting the faces
Lying here, lying hid in the sand.

When at night there's a seething of surf,

The grandames look out o'er the surf,

They reckon their dead and their long years of sadness, And they shake their lean fists at the sea and its madness, And curse the white fangs of the surf.

But the mariners sleep by the sea.
They hear not the sound of the sea,

Nor the hum from the church where the psalm is uplifted,
Nor the crying of birds that above them are drifted.
The mariners sleep by the sea.

Margaret L. Woods.