The old sea captain has sailed the seas <br />So long, that the waves at mirth, <br />Or the waves gone wild, and the crests of these, <br />Were as near playmates from birth: <br />He has loved both the storm and the calm, because <br />They seemed as his brothers twain,-- <br />The flapping sail was his soul's applause, <br />And his rapture, the roaring main. <br /> <br />But now--like a battered hulk seems he, <br />Cast high on a foreign strand, <br />Though he feels 'in port,' as it need must be, <br />And the stay of a daughter's hand-- <br />Yet ever the round of the listless hours,-- <br />His pipe, in the languid air-- <br />The grass, the trees, and the garden flowers, <br />And the strange earth everywhere! <br /> <br />And so betimes he is restless here <br />In this little inland town, <br />With never a wing in the atmosphere <br />But the wind-mill's, up and down; <br />His daughter's home in this peaceful vale, <br />And his grandchild 'twixt his knees-- <br />But never the hail of a passing sail, <br />Nor the surge of the angry seas! <br /> <br />He quits his pipe, and he snaps its neck-- <br />Would speak, though he coughs instead, <br />Then paces the porch like a quarter-deck <br />With a reeling mast o'erhead! <br />Ho! the old sea captain's cheeks glow warm, <br />And his eyes gleam grim and weird, <br />As he mutters about, like a thunder-storm, <br />In the cloud of his beetling beard.<br /><br />James Whitcomb Riley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-retired-sea-captain/
