Nantucket Whalers by Daniel Henderson

I

This is the breed that followed the tails

Of clumsy, crowding, challenging whales,

Choosing infinite toil instead

Of indolent lives the Blackbeards led,

Spurning such foul wealth as might be

In opium or "black ivory,"

Questing instead of Pieces of Eight

Or ropes of pearl or Portugal plate,

Blubber for their Golden Fleece--

Barrels sloshing with whales' grease.

These are the men sagacious whales

Lured away from wives and daughters

Down to brassy, palm-fringed waters,

Spouting beyond their cloudy sails,

Lifting a frolicking fluke or nose

To their masthead's road of "There she blows!"

Playing a perilous hide-and-seek

By Patagonia, Mozambique,

Leading them on through eternities,

Plotting with typhoons, ice-choked seas,

Bladed reef, insidious shoal

To cheat them of their hard-wrung toll.

II

This is the isle of the new Ulysses

Who dropped his sails in coral rings,

Fearless of blow-guns, war-clubs, krisses --

 Who wandered home from the world's abysses

And made no boast of his voyagings,

Leaving laconic logs to tell

That his ship was saved by a miracle

From the bull sperm carrying in his hide--

As tokens of triumphant wars--

A dozen irons, a score of scars

From hounding whalemen long defied;

How he drew them into a milling school

And drenched them in a blood whirlpool;

 How he crushed Mate Obed in his jaws

And drowned Saul, clawing at his back,

and turned, took the ship for mark

And hurled his bulk against the bark,

Making the stalwart timbers shake

Like red froth in the creature's wake--

How yet the master, as he swayed,

Hurled unerringly his blad

And saw his rallying sailors drag

The Killer, spouting a crimson flag.

III

This is the isle where women mated

And gave their men to the deep, and waited,

Bearing their babes alone

And by the bare hearthstone

Battling the awful dread

Interminable absence bred;

This is the isle whose roofs are towers

Where women watched eternal hours

For the lovely and incredible sight

Of a yearned-for ship in its homing flight.

IV

Such were the old Nantucketers

And the men of Bedford and Vineyard Haven--

Would that their spirits were our spurs--

Whose decks were never trod by craven:

Who dared the unknown, took the chance

And rose the kings of circumstance--

Yet reverent beneath the span

Of heaven's infinite caravan,

Or when they brooded on the scroll

Jehovah spread from pole to pole.

V

Such were the circumnavigators

Who deemed themselves but mere harpooners

Nor dreamed that their malodorous schooners

Were the galleons of creators:

Captains who with but whales for quarry

Yet made the barren sea-maps starry

With dazzling islands lost to man

Since first the sundering currents ran;

Who loved supremely and who went

Leaving their moorland eloquent

Of men who found in their sea goal

Riches propitious for the soul--

Such fortitude and grace

As grudging ocean yields a conquering race.