This week’s poem is “The Last Chantey” by Rudyard Kipling. I have chosen it because it’s one of my favourites.
Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it,
Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;
And the ships shall go abroad
To the Glory of the Lord
Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea!
Poem 427. The Last Chantey
“…and there was no more sea.”
1
Thus said The Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim
Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
“Lo! Earth has passed away
On the smoke of Judgment Day.
That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?”
2
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
“Plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee!
But the war is done between us,
In the deep the Lord hath seen us –
Our bones we’ll leave the barracout’, and God may sink the sea!”
3
Then said the soul of Judas that betrayed Him:
“Lord, hast Thou forgotten Thy covenant with me?
How once a year I go
To cool me on the floe?
And Ye take my day of mercy if Ye take away the sea!”
4
Then said the soul of the Angel of the Off-shore Wind:
(He that bits the thunder when the bull-mouthed breakers flee):
“I have watch and ward to keep
O’er Thy wonders on the deep,
And Ye take mine honour from me if Ye take away the sea!”
5
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
“Nay, but we were angry, and a hasty folk are we!
If we worked the ship together
Till she foundered in foul weather,
Are we babes that we should clamour for a vengeance on the sea?”
6
Then said the souls of the slaves that men threw overboard:
“Kennelled in the picaroon a weary band were we;
But Thy arm was strong to save,
And it touched us on the wave,
And we drowsed the long tides idle till Thy Trumpets tore the sea.”
7
Then cried the soul of the stout Apostle Paul to God:
“Once we frapped a ship, and she laboured woundily.
There were fourteen score of these,
And they blessed Thee on their knees,
When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under Malta by the sea!”
8
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
Plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily:
“Our thumbs are rough and tarred,
And the tune is something hard –
May we lift a Deepsea Chantey such as seamen use at sea?”
9
Then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers –
Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:
“Ho, we revel in our chains
O’er the sorrow that was Spain’s;
Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!”
10
Up spake the soul of a gray Gothavn ‘speckshioner –
(He that led the flenching in the fleets of fair Dundee)
“Oh, the ice-blink white and near,
And the bowhead breaching clear!
Will Ye whelm them all for wantonness that wallow in the sea?”
11
Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
Crying: “Under Heaven, here is neither lead nor lee!
Must we sing for evermore
On the windless, glassy floor?
Take back your golden fiddles and we’ll beat to open sea!”
12
Then stooped the Lord, and He called the good sea up to Him,
And ‘stablished his borders unto all eternity,
That such as have no pleasure
For to praise the Lord by measure,
They may enter into galleons and serve Him on the sea.
13
Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it,
Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;
And the ships shall go abroad
To the Glory of the Lord
Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea!
This is a favourite poem of mine from a long time ago—perhaps because it tells a story or because it’s full of striking images.
Kipling takes as his starting point Revelation 21:1. At the end of The Book of Revelation, God supposedly will make a new heaven and a new earth to replace those destroyed by the events prophesied by St. John of Patmos, but the sea shall be no more: “And I saw a new heaven, and a new earth: for the first heaven, and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.”
The poem begins with God asking His heavenly host whether the sea should be gathered up to reinforce the power of His word. The countless souls of the mariners who lost their lives in their voyages are uninterested in the fate of the sea—it has destroyed them and they have left their bones to the barracout’ (barracuda), so in their estimation “God may sink the sea!”
However, we now hear from two Biblical figures: Judas, who is permitted one day of mercy a year when he may visit an iceberg to cool the heat of his damnation, and the Angel of the Off-Shore Wind whose responsibility is “Thy wonders on the deep” and feels his honour will be impugned if his task is diminished by the loss of the sea.
The mariners begin to reconsider, asking themselves if their folly in sailing their vessels can honestly be blamed on the sea or if they are being “a hasty folk” whose baseless anger is driving them to desire revenge on the means of their destruction, rather than seeking the cause.
The souls of the slaves carried in those ships now chime in, reminding the Lord that His mercy brought them to the faith; St Paul confirms this with a story of having frapped a slave ship as she struggled against the waves—frapping is the practice of saving a damaged ship by binding cable around its hull. The ship reached Malta and the slaves learned “Thy Grace and Glory” and “they blessed Thee on their knees”—the implication being that the slaves came to God through their experiences on the sea.
The “jolly, jolly mariners” strike in again at this point, grousing that their hands and hearts are unsuited to heavenly music and instruments—they would prefer a “Deepsea Chantey” (sea shanty) as was commonly used in working a sailing ship.
The next two stanzas give us more voices in support of keeping the sea: the gentlemen-adventurers (pirates) who were “masters of the sea” despite their bloody-handed crimes and the soul of an Inspector (the highest official in Greenland—Gothavn being the administrative centre of North Greenland, now known as Qeqertasuaq) who had, in his younger days, led a gang of men on a Dundee whaling vessel in stripping (flensing) the blubber from whales. He recalls the shimmer of the air above the ice (the ice-blink) and the sight of whales breaching (rising out of the water) and asks if all who worked on the sea are to be destroyed.
The mariners have become bored with the “windless, glassy floor” of heaven where there is “neither lead nor lee”—like being in deep water where no sounding lead will find the bottom and there’s no shelter (or lee) from the winds. They want to hand back their harps—“your golden fiddles” and voyage out on the sea again.
God has heard all these arguments in favour of the sea and brings it up to Him and establishes it “unto all eternity” so that those who don’t care to praise the Lord in the usual manner can serve him in ships trading on the new sea. So the poem ends with a striking image: whatever the weather or the conditions, in the post-apocalyptic world and heaven, the sea shall remain as a symbol of God’s glory and the urging of “the silly sailor-folk”.
I like it because it has such striking imagery: Judas on his ice floe, the rather comical sailor folk, the pirates and the slaves and those closing lines. I like the rhythm of the poem too. There are a number of performances of this poem on YouTube of varying quality but the best by a long way is the musical setting by Jesse Gillespie.