And in the sunny dawns of hot Julys, The labourers going to meadow see her there. Rubbing the sleep out of their heavy eyes, They lean upon the parapet to stare; They see her plaiting basil in her hair, Basil, the dark red wound-wort, cops of clover, The blue self-heal and golden Jacks of Dover. Dully they watch her, then they turn to go To that high Shropshire upland of late hay; Her singing lingers with them as they mow, And many times they try it, now grave, now gay, Till, with full throat, over the hills away, They lift it clear; oh, very clear it towers Mixed with the swish of many falling flowers. _Selections from_ _DAUBER_ THE SETTING OF THE WATCH Darker it grew, still darker, and the stars Burned golden, and the fiery fishes came. The wire-note loudened from the straining spars; The sheet-blocks clacked together always the same; The rushing fishes streaked the seas with flame, Racing the one speed noble as their own: What unknown joy was in those fish unknown! Names in the darkness passed and voices cried; The red spark glowed and died, the faces seemed As things remembered when a brain has died, To all but high intenseness deeply dreamed. Like hissing spears the fishes’ fire streamed, And on the clipper rushed with tossing mast, A bath of flame broke round her as she passed. The watch was set, the night came, and the men Hid from the moon in shadowed nooks to sleep, Bunched like the dead; still, like the dead, as when Plague in a city leaves none even to weep. The ship’s track brightened to a mile-broad sweep; The mate there felt her pulse, and eyed the spars: South-west by south she staggered under the stars. THE WATCH BELOW Down in his bunk the Dauber lay awake Thinking of his unfitness for the sea. Each failure, each derision, each mistake, There in the life not made for such as he; A morning grim with trouble sure to be, A noon of pain from failure, and a night Bitter with men’s contemning and despite. This in the first beginning, the green leaf, Still in the Trades before bad weather fell; What harvest would he reap of hate and grief When the loud Horn made every life a hell? When the sick ship lay over, clanging her bell, And no time came for painting or for drawing, But all hands fought, and icy death came clawing? The green bunk curtains moved, the brass rings clicked, The Cook cursed in his sleep, turning and turning, The moonbeam’s moving finger touched and picked, And all the stars in all the sky were burning. “This is the art I’ve come for, and am learning, The sea and ships and men and travelling things. It is most proud, whatever pain it brings.”