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Chart-house poems

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Description:«FORMAL BOW.We take the uncompromising position that if poetry thrives above the hectic din of battle, it well deserves to live! Hence we launch our poetic bark with high hopes for have we not matched our submarine destroyer against a submarine and conquered? and do not our efforts to prove that the pen is mightier than the sword go on apace? Back-channel admirals may come and back-channel admirals may go; sea-going skippers may come and sea-going skippers may go; kings may come and kings may go; world wars may come and world wars may go; but poetry and long-haired poets go on for ever!Who beyond a very narrow circle would ever have known that Horatius stood at the Bridge except that a poet came along and sang about it? Who would have given the Light Brigade credit for more than an afternoon foray had not a thoughtful poet dipped his pen into ink? How could Cæsar and Napoleon have risen to such heights of ambition had they not read so much of themselves in the books? And coming down to the time in which we live, how could the Kaiser have embarked on such a crusade except that he listened to the musings of a romancer who told him with more poetry than truth that his army was the best in the world?It is a pleasing paradox that in the height of trouble and oppression, and even in the face of disaster, the soul of man turns to song and to verse. The soldier in the trenches finds opportunity to write down lofty sentiments in the thick of battle; and we whom circumstances have placed on the sea to do our part are no less prone to hold our heads among the clouds. It might seem that sailors specially designated to keep the logs would be sufficient for poetic purposes. Our skipper remarked several months ago that two yeomen hammering on typewriters would never win the war. Possibly so; but be that as it may, the fact remains that half of our ship's company (to exaggerate a little) is writing verse as religiously as the immortal subway guards at Times Square are writing plays!Down in the galley our ship's cook serves out doggerel with nearly every meal. We do not know which we like better or worse. We have the bunker environment to thank for producing the author of the masterpiece, "The Coal Passer's Chantey." Our gunners' mates are humming original compositions as they oil the guns. If a deck hand appears not to be doing his full duty, it is likely that he has ducked behind a smoke stack to jot down a poem. Surely all's well that ends well, and we are doing famously. Versatility has even penetrated the Irish members of the crew, for our worthy Jack-of-the-Dust offers the following as we pen these very lines:Oh, our skipper was scraping the bottom,The gunners wore braid on their arms;The port passageway looked just like Broadway,The First Luff had nothing to say.All the tanks were filled up with Green River,—How sweet and how real it did seem!The Bo'sun kept saying, "Knock off and start playing!"—'Twas only a deck hand's fond dream!Oh, our ensign was stowing the bunkers,All the gobs had gold stars on their sleeves,The fireroom flue looked like Fifth Avenue,The Exex. was all downcast and blue.All the tanks were filled full with Green River,How sweet and how real it did seem!—And the skipper kept saying, "Knock off and start playing!"—'Twas only a coal-heaver's dream!It is not an easy matter to write poetry on a small craft at sea. The rolling and the pitching at times are awful, and it is enough that poets and salty old sailors alike should manage to keep body and soul together. So we decided to try this thing once, and this little volume is the result. At odd moments while protecting troop and cargo ships from submarines we climbed into the chart-house and wrote down our thoughts. The chart house is the place where we keep our sea maps and the steering engine, which hisses steam and sputters oil as the rudder is thrown to starboard or to port. The chart-house is also the place where lookouts and quartermasters seek refuge when our skipper chases them off the bridge. Our skipper does not know it because he never goes in there. He simply stays above, paces back and forth, and raves.All the poems herein were written in broad daylight, except "Fleeting Peace," which was born at midnight on Sept. 20th, 1918, in equally broad moonlight. It is for you to decide, gentle reader, whether poems written under any other conditions would sound sweeter, and we place our fate undeservedly in your tender hands.THE AUTHOR.France, October, 1918.»We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Chart-house poems. To get started finding Chart-house poems, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Pages: 105

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: Leopold B. Hill

Release: 1918

ISBN

Description: «FORMAL BOW.We take the uncompromising position that if poetry thrives above the hectic din of battle, it well deserves to live! Hence we launch our poetic bark with high hopes for have we not matched our submarine destroyer against a submarine and conquered? and do not our efforts to prove that the pen is mightier than the sword go on apace? Back-channel admirals may come and back-channel admirals may go; sea-going skippers may come and sea-going skippers may go; kings may come and kings may go; world wars may come and world wars may go; but poetry and long-haired poets go on for ever!Who beyond a very narrow circle would ever have known that Horatius stood at the Bridge except that a poet came along and sang about it? Who would have given the Light Brigade credit for more than an afternoon foray had not a thoughtful poet dipped his pen into ink? How could Cæsar and Napoleon have risen to such heights of ambition had they not read so much of themselves in the books? And coming down to the time in which we live, how could the Kaiser have embarked on such a crusade except that he listened to the musings of a romancer who told him with more poetry than truth that his army was the best in the world?It is a pleasing paradox that in the height of trouble and oppression, and even in the face of disaster, the soul of man turns to song and to verse. The soldier in the trenches finds opportunity to write down lofty sentiments in the thick of battle; and we whom circumstances have placed on the sea to do our part are no less prone to hold our heads among the clouds. It might seem that sailors specially designated to keep the logs would be sufficient for poetic purposes. Our skipper remarked several months ago that two yeomen hammering on typewriters would never win the war. Possibly so; but be that as it may, the fact remains that half of our ship's company (to exaggerate a little) is writing verse as religiously as the immortal subway guards at Times Square are writing plays!Down in the galley our ship's cook serves out doggerel with nearly every meal. We do not know which we like better or worse. We have the bunker environment to thank for producing the author of the masterpiece, "The Coal Passer's Chantey." Our gunners' mates are humming original compositions as they oil the guns. If a deck hand appears not to be doing his full duty, it is likely that he has ducked behind a smoke stack to jot down a poem. Surely all's well that ends well, and we are doing famously. Versatility has even penetrated the Irish members of the crew, for our worthy Jack-of-the-Dust offers the following as we pen these very lines:Oh, our skipper was scraping the bottom,The gunners wore braid on their arms;The port passageway looked just like Broadway,The First Luff had nothing to say.All the tanks were filled up with Green River,—How sweet and how real it did seem!The Bo'sun kept saying, "Knock off and start playing!"—'Twas only a deck hand's fond dream!Oh, our ensign was stowing the bunkers,All the gobs had gold stars on their sleeves,The fireroom flue looked like Fifth Avenue,The Exex. was all downcast and blue.All the tanks were filled full with Green River,How sweet and how real it did seem!—And the skipper kept saying, "Knock off and start playing!"—'Twas only a coal-heaver's dream!It is not an easy matter to write poetry on a small craft at sea. The rolling and the pitching at times are awful, and it is enough that poets and salty old sailors alike should manage to keep body and soul together. So we decided to try this thing once, and this little volume is the result. At odd moments while protecting troop and cargo ships from submarines we climbed into the chart-house and wrote down our thoughts. The chart house is the place where we keep our sea maps and the steering engine, which hisses steam and sputters oil as the rudder is thrown to starboard or to port. The chart-house is also the place where lookouts and quartermasters seek refuge when our skipper chases them off the bridge. Our skipper does not know it because he never goes in there. He simply stays above, paces back and forth, and raves.All the poems herein were written in broad daylight, except "Fleeting Peace," which was born at midnight on Sept. 20th, 1918, in equally broad moonlight. It is for you to decide, gentle reader, whether poems written under any other conditions would sound sweeter, and we place our fate undeservedly in your tender hands.THE AUTHOR.France, October, 1918.»We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Chart-house poems. To get started finding Chart-house poems, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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