MODERN SEA POEMS. 303 



Turn we now to a new departure " in sea poetry, one partially inaugurated by the 

 Dibdins, carried on by Tom Hood the elder, and having of late years William Schwenck 

 Gilbert for its principal exponent. It is often as full of nature as the serious productions 

 of other poets, yet itself favours the ludicrous and satirical side. Hood's " Demon Ship " 

 is a fair example 



"Down went my holm close-reefed the tack held freely in my hand- 

 With ballast snug I put about, and scudded for the land. 

 Loud hissed the sea beneath her lee ; my little boat flew fast, 

 But faster still the rushing storm came borne upon the blast. 

 Lord ! what a roaring hurricane beset the straining sail ! 

 "What furious sleet, with level drift, and fierce assaults of hail ! 

 What darksome caverns yawned before ! what jagged steeps behind ! 

 Like battle steeds with foamy manes wild tossing in the wind. 

 Each after each sank down astern, exhausted in the chase, 

 But where it sank another rose, and galloped in its place ; 

 As black as night they turned to white, and cast against the cloud 

 A snowy sheet, as if each surge upturned a sailor's shroud : 

 Still flew my boat ; alas ! alas ! her course was nearly run. 

 Behold yon fatal billow rise ten billows heaped in one. 

 With fearful speed the dreary mass came rolling, rolling fast, 

 As if the scooping sea contained one only wave at last. 

 Still on it came, with horrid roar, a swift pursuing grave ; 

 It seemed as though some cloud had turned its hugeness to a wave. 

 Its briny sleet began to beat beforehand in my face 

 I felt the rearward keel begin to climb its swelling base ! 

 I saw its alpine hoary head impending over mine. 

 Another pulse and down it rushed, an avalanche of brine ! 

 Brief pause had I on God to cry, or think of wife and home ; 

 The waters closed, and when I shrieked, I shrieked below the foam ! " 



After battling with the water, and half insensible, he finds himself at last safely on 

 board a strange vessel ; a terrible face haunts him black, grimly black, all black, 

 except the grinning teeth. The sooty crew were like their master. "Where am 

 I? in what dreadful ship?" cried he, in terrified agony. The answer was a laugh that 

 rang from stem to stern from the gloomy shapes that flitted round. They guffawed and 

 grinned and choked to the top of their bent 



" And then the chief made answer for the whole : 

 ' Our skins,' said he ' are black, because we carry coal. 

 You'll find your mother, sure enough, and see your native fields, 

 For this here ship has picked you up the Mary Anne of Shields.' " 



The transition from the really powerful and dramatic description of the billows and 

 surf to the ridiculous denouement is irresistibly and artistically comic. Hood's purely 

 amusing pieces are more generally known than the above. Take as an example " Faithless 

 Sally Brown;" the girl who so soon forgot her first Ben is modelled on Dibdinian lines, 

 but the touches of humour are infinitely more delicate. 



The popularity of a class of sea-songs which can now be heard from the streets to 



