Nancy stood up, with eyes of steel,
Her famous buttocks no man could feel
Wiggled behind her as she cam;
All of the men burst out in flame.
They drenched their smoking rumps in beer
But still her voice they all could hear:
“The man who shall jazz me is not known!”
They all passed out; she was left alone.
With his breeches down, Sir Koocoo stood:
“I am the man and I’ll do it good!”
Then the breeches clashed with a toss and flirt
On the shimmering silk of the knee length skirt.
Sir Koocoo all in worthy haste,
Turned her dress about her waist.
Then under his fingers suddenly
Her bloomers sank to her dimpled knee,
And there was naught between knee and waist,
And every sailor gaped to see.
Then out of his breeches, bright with hope,
He dragged—and he did not have to grope—
What looked like a full grown hawser rope.
Nancy cursed and refused to buck
As a rammer strikes, Sir Koocoo struck,
Pouring his loins in a single thrust;
Her buttocks smacked in the fore-deck’s dust.
The sky was blue like an old gin-mill.
The rum lapped softly, still on still;
And between the rum and the gin and the beer,
Nancy’s yells were brittle and shrill.
The day was still and crew was lit;
Nancy stood for she could not sit,
And between the sun and sea and the sky,
Her bloomers hung on the bowsprit.
But down by the beds where the wenches plead,
Only the bold collegians breed,
For the gonny clutches a strong man’s tool,
And the streptococci scatters its seed.
Nun
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I have anchored my ship to a quiet port;
A land that is holy and blest.
But I gaze through my bars at the tempest's sport
And I long for the sea's unrest.
Ocean-Thoughts
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The strong winds whisper o'er the sea,
Flinging the gray-gnarled ocean's spate;
The gray waves lash along the lea.
The lone gulls wings are high and free,
The great seal trumpets for his mate;
The high winds drum, the wild winds dree.
The gray shoals roar unceasingly,
Where combers march in kingly state,
The crest-crowned monarchs of the sea.
And now, along the lone, white lea,
The surges fade, the winds abate.
And the wide sea lies silently.
But far to islands, restlessly
Surges the tide, unreined and great,
Forever roaming and forever free.
And thus my soul, forever restlessly,
Longs for the outworld, vast, unultimate,
The vasty freedom of the swinging sea,
Forever roaming and forever free.
The One Black Stain
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They carried him out on the barren sand
where the rebel captains died;
Where the grim gray rotting gibbets stand
as Magellan reared them on the strand,
And the gulls that haunt the lonesome land
wail to the lonely tide.
Drake faced them all like a lion at bay,
with his lion head upflung:
"Dare ye my word of law defy,
to say this traitor shall not die?"
And his captains dared not meet his eye
but each man held his tongue.
Solomon Kane stood forth alone,
grim man of sober face:
"Worthy of death he may well be,
but the trial ye held was mockery,
"Ye hid your spite in a travesty
where justice hid her face.
"More of the man had ye been, on deck
your sword to cleanly draw
"In forthright fury from its sheath
and openly cleave him to the teeth --
"Rather than slink and hide beneath
a hollow word of the law."
Hell rose in the eyes of Francis Drake.
"Puritan knave!" swore he.
"Headsman! Give him the axe instead!
He shall strike off yon traitor's head!"
Solomon folded his arms and said,
darkly and somberly:
"I am no slave for your butcher's work."
"Bind him with triple strands!"
Drake roared and the men obeyed,
Hesitantly, as if afraid,
But Kane moved not as they took his blade
and pinioned his iron hands.
They bent the doomed man over to his knees,
the man who was to die;
They saw his lips in a strange smile bend,
one last long look they saw him send,
At Drake his judge and his one time friend
who dared not meet his eye.
The axe flashed silver in the sun,
a red arch slashed the sand;
A voice cried out as the head fell clear,
and the watchers flinched in sudden fear,
Though 'twas but a sea bird wheeling near
above the lonely strand.
"This be every traitor's end!"
Drake cried, and yet again.
Slowly his captains turned and went
and the admiral's stare was elsewhere bent
Than where the cold scorn with anger blent
in the eyes of Solomon Kane.
Night fell on the crawling waves;
the admiral's door was closed;
Solomon lay in the stenching hold;
his irons clashed as the ship rolled.
And his guard, grown weary and overbold,
lay down his pipe and dozed.
He woke with a hand at his corded throat
that gripped him like a vise;
Trembling he yielded up the key,
and the somber Puritan stood free,
His cold eyes gleaming murderously
with the wrath that is slow to rise.
Unseen, to the admiral's door,
went Solomon Kane from the guard,
Through the night and silence of the ship,
the guard's keen dagger in his grip;
No man of the dull crew saw him slip
through the door unbarred.
Drake at the table sat alone,