The Ship-Keeper

When dusk comes round again And red goes down the sun, And all the stevedore's men Have finished up and gone; When silent all and dark The tugs and lighters lie, And derricks stand up stark And still against the sky; When solemn, slow as doom, The dock policeman's tread Wakes echoes in the gloom Of each deserted shed - Old Mike, his nightly tale Of tasks at length complete, Limps slowly to the rail On lame rheumatic feet, Lights his black clay, and leans And thinks, as old men do, Of bygone things and scenes His lusty manhood knew; Until, when stars begin To gleam by two and three, He sees the ships come in That no one else can see - The ships that wait no tide, The ships that take no steam, But to their moorings glide As quiet as a dream; The ships he served of old, When blood was young and hot, Long wrecked or scraped or sold, Their very names forgot; The ships that raced the wool, The grain, the jute, the tea, Titania beautiful, And proud Thermopylae ; The 'Lochs,' the Irish 'Stars,' Old fleets of far renown, Green's, Wigram's, Some's, Dunbar's, The pride of London town. Cold Alps of shining snow, He knows them one and all, The fast ships and the slow, The big ships and the small. Knows too each glimmering queen Or craven king they bore, Each dragon gold and green, Armed knight or turbaned Moor. Lost shipmates of old years Along their bulwarks throng; Old speech of theirs he hears, Old yarns, old scraps of song. The last rose leaves the skies; The river breeze blows chill; But still with age-dimmed eyes He dreams, as old men will, His pipe between his lips; Still, dreaming, seems to see The lost and lovely ships That no one sees but he.