In a sailormen's restaurant Rotherhithe way, <br />Where the din of the docksides is loud all the day, <br />And the breezes come bringing off basin and pond <br />And all the piled acres of lumber beyond, <br />From the Oregon ranges the tang of the pine <br />And the breath of the Baltic as bracing as wine … <br />Among the stale odours of hot food and cold, <br />In a fly-spotted window I there did behold <br />A ship in a bottle some sailor had made <br />In watches below, swinging South with the Trade, <br />When the fellows were patching old dungaree suits, <br />Or mending up oilskins and leaky sea-boots, <br />Or whittling a model, or painting a chest, <br />Or smoking and yarning and watching the rest. <br /> <br />In fancy I saw him - all weathered and browned, <br />Deep crows'-feet and wrinkles his eyelids around, <br />A pipe in the teeth that seemed little the worse <br />For Liverpool pantiles and stringy salt horse … <br />The hairy forearm with its gaudy tattoo <br />Of a bold-looking female in scarlet and blue … <br />The fingers all roughened and toughened and scarred, <br />With hauling and hoisting so calloused and hard, <br />So crooked and stiff you would wonder that still <br />They could handle with cunning and fashion with skill <br />The tiny full-rigger predestined to ride <br />To its cable of thread on its green-painted tide, <br />In its wine-bottle world while the old world went on, <br />And the sailor who made it was long ago gone. <br /> <br />And still as he worked at the toy on his knee <br />He would spin his old yarns of the ships and the sea, <br /> <br />Thermopylae <br />, <br />Lightning <br />, <br />Lothair <br />and <br />Red Jacket <br />, <br />And many another such famous old packet
