Harry Kemp Poems

I have a table, cot and chair
And nothing more. The walls are bare
Yet I confess that in my room
Lie Syrian rugs rich from the loom,
...

At sea I learned the weather,
At sea I learned to know
That waves raged not forever,
...

These are the songs that we sing with crowding feet,
Heaving up the anchor chain,
Or walking down the deck in the wind and sleet
...

There's not much in the fo'c'sle of a ship
But old sea boots and chests that stand in rows
While up above a smoky lantern glows,
...

'Nothing but damn fools sail the sea,'
Said the Captain to me.
'I have a young son,' says the Captain to me,
...

Have you ever seen a shining ship
Riding the broad-backed wave,
While the sailors pull the ropes and sing
The chantey's lusty stave?
...

They drank the bitter, salt wine of the sea,
They breathed up drowning bubbles from below
While we sat in the storm's red after-glow
...

When there wakes any wind to shake this place,
This wave-hemmed atom of land on which I dwell,
My fancy conquers time, condition, space, -
...

I'd like to return to the world again,
To the dutiful, work-a-day world of men, -
For I'm sick of the beach-comber's lot,
...

The Devil take the cook, that old grey-bearded fellow,
Yo ho, haul away!
Who feeds us odds and ends and biscuits whiskered yellow,
...