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Herman Melville (Герман Мелвилл)


Tom Deadlight



       During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the
       Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains
       of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the
       sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British Dreadnaught,
       98, wandering in his mind, though with glimpses of sanity, and
       starting up at whiles, sings by snatches his good-bye and last
       injunctions to two messmates, his watchers, one of whom fans the
       fevered tar with the flap of his old sou'wester. Some names and
       phrases, with here and there a line, or part of one; these, in
       his aberration, wrested into incoherency from their original
       connection and import, he voluntarily derives, as he does the
       measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife,
       and now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last
       flutterings of distempered thought.


     Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,—
       Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain,
     For I've received orders for to sail for the
         Deadman,
       But hope with the grand fleet to see you
         again.

     I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail
         aback, boys;
       I have hove my ship to, for the strike
         soundings clear—
     The black scud a'flying; but, by God's blessing,
         dam' me,
       Right up the Channel for the Deadman I'll
         steer.

     I have worried through the waters that are
         called the Doldrums,
       And growled at Sargasso that clogs while ye
         grope—
     Blast my eyes, but the light-ship is hid by the
         mist, lads:—
       Flying Dutchman—odds bobbs—off the
         Cape of Good Hope!

     But what's this I feel that is fanning my cheek,
         Matt?
       The white goney's wing?—how she rolls!—
         't is the Cape!—
     Give my kit to the mess, Jock, for kin none is
         mine, none;
       And tell Holy Joe to avast with the crape.

     Dead reckoning, says Joe, it won't do to go by;
       But they doused all the glims, Matt, in sky
         t' other night.
     Dead reckoning is good for to sail for the
         Deadman;
       And Tom Deadlight he thinks it may reckon
         near right.

     The signal!—it streams for the grand fleet to
         anchor.
       The captains—the trumpets—the hullabaloo!
     Stand by for blue-blazes, and mind your
         shank-painters,
       For the Lord High Admiral, he's squinting
         at you!

     But give me my tot, Matt, before I roll over;
       Jock, let's have your flipper, it's good for to
         feel;
     And don't sew me up without baccy in mouth,
         boys,
       And don't blubber like lubbers when I turn
         up my keel.






Herman  Melville's other poems:
  1. Jack Roy
  2. Crossing the Tropics
  3. The Night March
  4. The College Colonel
  5. Lines Traced under an Image of Amor Threatening


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