Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/183

Not here, not here your danger lies—
  (Stare hard, O hooded eyne!)
Save were the dazed rock-pigeons rise
  The lit cliffs give no sign.

Therefore—to break the rest ye seek,
  The Narrow Seas to clear—
Hark to the siren's whimpering shriek—
  The driven death is here!
Look to your van a league away,—
  What midnight terror stays
The bulk that checks against the spray
  Her crackling tops ablaze?

Hit, and hard hit! The blow went home,
  The muffled, knocking stroke—
The steam that overruns the foam—
  The foam that thins to smoke—
The smoke that clokes the deep aboil—
  The deep that chokes her throes
Till, streaked with ash and sleeked with oil,
  The lukewarm whirlpools close!

A shadow down the sickened wave
  Long since her slayer fled:
But hear their chattering quick-fires rave
  Astern, abeam, ahead!
Panic that shells the drifting spar—
  Loud waste with none to check—
Mad fear that rakes a scornful star
  Or sweeps a consort's deck.

Now, while their silly smoke hangs thick,
  Now ere their wits they find,
Lay in and lance them to the quick—
  Our gallied whales are blind!