I don't know who Saint Mawes was, but he surely can't have been <br />A stiff old stone gazebo on a carved cathedral screen, <br />Or a holy-looking customer rigged out in blue and red <br />In a sunset-coloured window with a soup-plate round his head. <br />But he must have been a skipper who had sailed the salt seas round <br />(Or at least as many of 'em as had in his time been found), <br />And sung his songs and kissed his girl and had his share of fun, <br />Till he took and got religion, when his sailing days were done. <br /> <br />He must have had a ruddy face, a grey beard neatly trimmed, <br />And eyes with crow's feet round them, neither are nor use had dimmed, <br />And he'd lean there on the jetty with his glass up to his eye, <br />And look across the Carrick Roads, and watch the ships go by, <br />And yarn with his old cronies of the ships he used to know, <br />And shipmates that he sailed with many and many a year ago, <br />In the West of England tin-boats on the Tyre and Sidon run, <br />Before he got religion or his sailing days were done. <br /> <br />And when he came at last to die, they'd lay him down to rest <br />On a green and grassy foreland sloping gently to the west, <br />Where the wind's cry and the gull's cry would be near him night and day, <br />And a rousing deep-sea shanty might come to him where he lay. <br />And they left him there a-sleeping, for to smell the harbour smells, <br />And to count the passing watches by the striking of the bells, <br />And listen to the sailormen a-singing in the sun, <br />Like a good old master mariner whose sailing days are done.<br /><br />Cicely Fox Smith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-saint-of-cornwall/
