Oh Hubshee, carry your shoes in your hand and bow your head on
your breast! 113
Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way, 90
Said England unto Pharaoh, ‘I must make a man of you,’ 98
Take up the White Man’s burden, 94
The God of Fair Beginnings, 32
‘There’s no sense in going further--it’s the edge of cultivation,’ 61
The strength of twice three thousand horse, 13
They christened my brother of old, 4
This is our lot if we live so long and labour unto the end, 57
We have no heart for the fishing, we have no hand for the oar, 26
We’ve sent our little Cupids all ashore, 23
When I was a King and a Mason--a Master proven and skilled, 78
When that great Kings return to clay, 74
When the darkened Fifties dip to the North, 87
Where run your colts at pasture, 18
Who hath desired the Sea?--the sight of salt water unbounded, 1
With those that bred, with those that loosed the strife, 77
Yearly, with tent and rifle, our careless white men go, 51
THE SEA AND THE HILLS [Page 1]
Who hath desired the Sea?--the sight of salt water unbounded--
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber
wind-hounded?
The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and
growing--
Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane
blowing--
His Sea in no showing the same--his Sea and the same ’neath each
showing--
His Sea as she slackens or thrills?
So and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hillmen desire their Hills!
Who hath desired the Sea?--the immense and contemptuous surges?
The shudder, the stumble, the swerve, as the star-stabbing bowsprit
emerges?
The orderly clouds of the Trades, and the ridged, roaring sapphire
thereunder--
Unheralded cliff-haunting flaws and the headsail’s low-volleying
thunder--
His Sea in no wonder the same--his Sea and the same through each
wonder:
His Sea as she rages or stills?
So and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hillmen desire their Hills.
Who hath desired the Sea? Her menaces swift as her mercies,
The in-rolling walls of the fog and the silver-winged breeze that
disperses?
The unstable mined berg going South and the calvings and groans that
declare it;
White water half-guessed overside and the moon breaking timely to
bare it;
His Sea as his fathers have dared--his Sea as his children shall dare
it--
His Sea as she serves him or kills?
So and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hillmen desire their Hills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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