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Age (Millwall Dock)


It's 'ard on a ship when she's old —
An' her riggin' a sin to be'old,
An' there's nobody left to care
As 'er paintwork's all blistered and bare,
An' 'er brasses as glittered like gold,
They're all over tarnish an' mould…
Oh, it's 'ard —
'Ard on a ship when she's old!

It's 'ard on a man when 'e's old…
An' 'is ships are all broke up an' sold,
An' there ain't nothin' left for 'im much
But trampin' around in the slutch
For a job o' shipkeepin' or such,
An' thinkin' o' foolin' an' fun
An' things as 'e's seen an' 'e's done
Where there's somethin' like 'eat in the sun,
An' 'is stren'th's like a tale as is told
In the mud, an' the rain, an' the cold…
Oh, it's 'ard —
'Ard on a man when he's old!

Notes

From FULL SAIL: More Sea Songs and Ballads, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Houghton Mifflin Co., NEW YORK, US, © 1926, pp. 106-107.

There is an acute awareness in many of Miss Smith's poems that the age of sail is passing, the ships as well as the shellbacks. This poem dwells on that.

This poem forms a set with "Poor Old Ship (Regent's Canal Dock)."

The header graphic is a view of the capstan on the foc'sle deck of the four-masted abandoned schooner Luther Little, Wiscasset, ME, in the early 1960's as photographed by Bob Ipcar.

Charley Noble

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