The Mine Sweepers
Dawn off the Foreland — the young flood making
Jumbled and short and steep —
Black in the hollows and bright where it’s breaking —
Awkward water to sweep.
“Mines reported in the fairway,
Warn all traffic and detain.
Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.”
Noon off the Foreland — the first ebb making
Lumpy and strong in the bight.
Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking
And the jackdaws wild with fright.
“Mines located in the fairway,
Boats now working up the chain,
Sweepers — Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.”
Dusk off the Foreland — the last light going
And the traffic crowding through,
And five damned trawlers with their syreens blowing
Heading the whole review!
“Sweep completed in the fairway,
No more mines remain.
Sent back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.”
– Rudyard Kipling
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10th August – On This Day In History
Born:
1928 Jimmy Dean (actor and singer)
Died:
1930 William H Taft (US President)
On This Day:
1792 Parisian mobs attack the palace of Louis XVI
Have a good Monday, 10th August
The King And The Sea
After His Realms and States were moved
To bare their hearts to the King they loved,
Tendering themselves in homage and devotion,
The Tide Wave up the Channel spoke
To all those eager, exultant folk:-
‘Hear now what Man was given you by the Ocean!
‘There was no thought of Orb or Crown
When the single wooden chest went down
To the steering-flat, and the careless Gunroom haled him
To learn by ancient and bitter use,
How neither Favour nor Excuse,
Nor aught save his sheer self henceforth availed him.
‘There was no talk of birth or rank
By the slung hammock or scrubbed plank
In the steel-grated prisons where 1 cast him;
But niggard hours and a narrow space
For rest-and the naked light on his face-
While the ship’s traffic flowed, unceasing, past him.
‘Thus I schooled him to go and come-
To speak at the word-at a sign be dumb;
To stand to his task, not seeking others to aid him;
To share in honour what praise might fall
For the task accomplished, and-over all-
To swallow rebuke in silence. Thus I made him.
‘I loosened every mood of the deep
On him, a child and sick for sleep,
Through the long watches that no time can measure,
When I drove him, deafened and choked and blind,
At the wave-tops cut and spun by the wind;
Lashing him, face and eyes, with my displeasure.
‘I opened him all the guile of the seas-
Their sullen, swift-sprung treacheries,
To be fought, or forestalled, or dared, or dismissed with laughter.
I showed him Worth by Folly concealed,
And the flaw in the soul that a chance revealed
(Lessons remembered-to bear fruit thereafter).
‘I dealt him Power beneath his hand,
For trial and proof, with his first Command-
Himself alone, and no man to gainsay him.
On him the End, the Means, and the Word,
And the harsher judgment if he erred,
And-outboard-Ocean waiting to betray him.
‘Wherefore, when he came to be crowned,
Strength in Duty held him bound,
So that not Power misled nor ease ensnared him
Who had spared himself no more than his seas had spared him!’
After His Lieges, in all His Lands,
Had laid their hands between His hands,
And His ships thundered service and devotion,
The Tide Wave, ranging the Planet, spoke
On all Our foreshores as it broke:-
‘Know now what Man 1 gave you-I, the Ocean!’
– Rudyard Kipling
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9th August – On This Day In History
Born:
1963 Whitney Houston (singer)
Died:
1888 Isaac Strauss (composer)
On This Day:
1965 Singapore gains independence (from Malaysia)
Have a good Sunday, 9th August
The Outlaws
Through learned and laborious years
They set themselves to find
Fresh terrors and undreamed-of fears
To heap upon mankind.
ALl that they drew from Heaven above
Or digged from earth beneath,
They laid into their treasure-trove
And arsenals of death:
While, for well-weighed advantage sake,
Ruler and ruled alike
Built up the faith they meant to break
When the fit hour should strike.
They traded with the careless earth,
And good return it gave:
They plotted by their neighbour’s hearth
The means to make him slave.
When all was ready to their hand
They loosed their hidden sword,
And utterly laid waste a land
Their oath was pledged to guard.
Coldly they went about to raise
To life and make more dread
Abominations of old days,
That men believed were dead.
They paid the price to reach their goal
Across a world in flame;
But their own hate slew their own soul
Before that victory came.
– Rudyard Kipling
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8th August – On This Day In History
Born:
1937 Dustin Hoffman (actor)
Died:
30BC Mark Anthony (Roman general and politician)
On This Day:
1843 Natal (part of South Africa) is formally made into a British Colony
Have a good Saturday, 8th August
Alarm Clocks
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling “It is day!”
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.
But in the city, like a wounded thing
That limps to cover from the angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing,
And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with cruel fervor ring
In many a high and dreary sleeping place.
– Joyce Kilmer
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7th August – On This Day In History
Born:
1560 Elizabeth Bathory (Hungarian countess and prolific serial killer)
Died:
1957 Oliver Hardy (part of the comedian duo of Laurel and Hardy)
On This Day:
1960 Ivory Coast gains its independence from France.
Have a good Friday, 7th August
Stars
Bright stars, yellow stars, flashing through the air,
Are you errant strands of Lady Mary’s hair?
As she slits the cloudy veil and bends down through,
Do you fall across her cheeks and over heaven too?
Gay stars, little stars, you are little eyes,
Eyes of baby angels playing in the skies.
Now and then a winged child turns his merry face
Down toward the spinning world — what a funny place!
Jesus Christ came from the Cross (Christ receive my soul!)
In each perfect hand and foot there was a bloody hole.
Four great iron spikes there were, red and never dry,
Michael plucked them from the Cross and set them in the sky.
Christ’s Troop, Mary’s Guard, God’s own men,
Draw your swords and strike at Hell and strike again.
Every steel-born spark that flies where God’s battles are,
Flashes past the face of God, and is a star.
– Joyce Kilmer
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6th August – On This Day In History
Born:
1881 Alexander Fleming (discovered penicillin)
Died:
1978 Pope Paul VI
On This Day:
1945 Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by US bomber “Enola Gay”
Have a good Thursday, 6th August.
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