Lie still, lie still, O brother ships,
Along the murky bay;
For you have known the wide, white tracks
And touched the far-away
The muted songs of lonely lands,
The stirrings of barbaric sands
Still whisper where you sway!
How have you swept with snowy sail
Up summer-dreaming seas,
Where once the Roman galleys flew
Like birds before the breeze,
And glimpsed along the Golden Horn
Your startled shadows in the morn,
Or touched the Hebrides!
Or northwards, in the Scottish nights,
Beyond the purple mulls.
How have you cut the curtained mists,
A-creep, with shrouded hulls,
And past the Orkneys gaunt and stark
Heard on the headlands hazy dark
The melancholy gulls!
O brother ships at anchor there,
What wealth is in the hold?
Prints from the looms of Lancashire,
And rugs the Tartars sold:
Pale, pearly rice and tawny wine
And fruits from arid Palestine,
And hammered brass and gold?
For me beside the weedy walls,
For me what do you bring?
A coral chain or ivory,
From Amsterdam a ring?
Fine lace that dusky hands have spun,
Old cups of grace that hold the sun,
Or carpets for a king?
O brother ships, my brother ships,
The breeze from off the blue
Will call and call you out again
And sweep your decks anew!
But I -- but I may never go,
Although the winds that round you blow
Stir all heart-strings, too!
First published in The Bulletin, 3 January 1924
