Southbaysail.com
Voices.... 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

But now a breeze came up for us astern-a canvas-bellying breeze, hale shipmate sent by the singing nymph with sun-bright hair; we made fast the braces, took our thwarts, and let the wind and steers-man work the ship with full sail spread all day above our coursing, till the sun dipped, and all the ways grew dark upon the fathomless unresting sea.

- Homer

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”    - Herman Melville

"The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness." - Joseph Conrad

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.   -Christopher Columbus

All who wander are not lost.
                                   - J.R.R. Tolkien

The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.

- Henry David Thoreau

by Vince Piazza

There is nothing - absolutely nothing -                                                                                                               half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. 
-- Water Rat, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows 

It is time to be old 
To take in sail. 
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

---

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love you back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

                  -  Lucille Clifton

 
I LAID me down beside the sea,
Endless in blue monotony;
The clouds were anchored in the sky,
Sometimes a sail went idling by.

Upon the shingles on the beach
Gray linen was spread out to bleach,
And gently with a gentle swell
The languid ripples rose and fell.

Mathilde Blind


 

"There is but a plank between a sailor and eternity." - Thomas Gibbons

Whenever I forget how talented God is, I look to the Sea.
- Whoopi Goldberg

  

---

"Yea,foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided;                                                                                                                          
two thirds of the fair world it yet covers." 
- Herman Melville  



A short board was made up the harbor on the port tack, then coming about she stood seaward, with her boom well off to port, and swung past the ferries with lively heels a photographer on the outer pier at East Boston got a picture of her as she swept by, her flag at the peak throwing its folds clear. A thrilling pulse beat high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt that there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood.

- Joshua Slocum

 Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house
when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about
to depart from life.   -Seneca 

One night came on a hurricane,
The sea was mountains rolling,
When Barney Buntline turned his quid,
And said to Billy Bowling:
"A strong nor-wester's blowing, Bill;
Hark! don't ye hear it roar, now?
Lord help 'em, how I pities them
Unhappy folks on shore now! 

"Foolhardy chaps who live in towns,
What danger they are all in,
And now lie quaking in their beds,
For fear the roof should fall in;
Poor creatures! how they envies us,
And wishes, I've a notion,
For our good luck, in such a storm,
To be upon the ocean! 

"And as for them who're out all day
On business from their houses,
And late at night are coming home,
To cheer their babes and spouses,--
While you and I, Bill, on the deck
Are comfortably lying,
My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots
About their heads are flying! 

"And very often have we heard
How men are killed and undone
By overturns of carriages,
By thieves, and fires in London;
We know what risks all landsmen run,
From noblemen to tailors;
Then, Bill, let us thank Providence
That you and I are sailors." 

Charles Dibden

by Hervey Garrett Smith

He rose at dawn and, fired with hope,
Shot o’er the seething harbour-bar,
And reach’d the ship and caught the rope,
And whistled to the morning star.

And while he whistled long and loud
He heard a fierce mermaiden cry,
“O boy, tho' thou are young and proud,
I see the place where thou wilt lie.

... “The sands and yeasty surges mix
In caves about the dreary bay,
And on thy ribs the limpet sticks,
And in thy heart the scrawl shall play.”

“Fool,” he answer’d , “death is sure
To those that stay and those that roam,
But I will nevermore endure
To sit with empty hands at home.

“My mother clings about my neck,
My sisters crying, ‘Stay for shame;’
My father raves of death and wreck,-
They are all to blame,
they are all to blame.

“God help me! save I take my part
Of danger on the roaring sea,
A devil rises in my heart,
Far worse than any death to me.”

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

The eager mariners mounted the prow;
Billows were breaking, sea against sand.
In the ship's hold snugle,
they stowed their trappings,
Gleaming armour and battle-gear:
Launched the vessle,
the well-braced bark,
Seaward bound on a joyous journey.
Over breaking billows, with bellying sail
And foamy beak, like a flying bird
The ship sped on, till the next day's sun
Showed sea-cliffs shining, towering hills
And stretching headlands.
The sea was crossed, 
The voyage ended,
the vessle moored.

-Beowulf

There is tide in the affairs of men,
which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
omitted, all the voyage of their life is
bound  in shallows and in miseries;

On such a full sea we are now afloat;
and we must take the current the clouds
folding and unfolding beyond the horizon.
when it serves, or lose our ventures. 

- William Shakespeare

In the long run, all solutions are temporary, so go ahead and use duct tape.
- Garrison Keillor

 

by Hervey Garrett Smith

Out of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping,
Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping
To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.

Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel
Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel
Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel.

And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops
Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue crops
Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops.

And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes,
The rainbow arching over in the skies,
New sparks of wonder opening in surprise.

All these pure things come foam and spray of the sea
Of Darkness abundant, which shaken mysteriously,
Breaks into dazzle of living, as dolphins that leap from the sea
Of midnight shake it to fire, so the secret of death we see.

D.H. Lawerence

I am standing by the seashore. 
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze 
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch 
until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud 
just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other. 

Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes! 
Gone where? Gone from my sight - that is all. 

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar 
as she was when she left my side 
and just as able to bear her load of living freight 
to the places of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. 

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
'There she goes! ' ,
there are other eyes watching her coming, 
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout :
'Here she comes!'

                                              - Henry van Dyke

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe ~
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.

"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we!"
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song
As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew.
The little stars were the herring fish
That lived in the beautiful sea ~

"Now cast your nets wherever you wish ~
Never afeard are we";
So cried the stars to the fisherman three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

---

All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam ~
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home;
'Twas all so pretty a sail it seemed
As if it could not be,
And some folks thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea ~

But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one's trundle-bed.
So shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
 
--Eugene Field

Music Video 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sal_pp_ptJQ

---

share this page with friends....

For more great content click icons below or visit;  southbaysail.com - home page

---

For an advertisement that reaches South Shore sailors.
Contact Mike Duffy 631- 258 1254 - info@southbaysail.com
Rates Here

---