CAPTAIN Dobbin, having retired from the South Seas 
In the dumb tides of , with a handful of shells, 
A few poisoned arrows, a cask of pearls, 
And five thousand pounds in the colonial funds, 
Now sails the street in a brick villa, 'Laburnum Villa', 
In whose blank windows the harbour hangs 
Like a fog against the glass, 
Golden and smoky, or stoned with a white glitter, 
And boats go by, suspended in the pane, 
Blue Funnel, Red Funnel, Messageries Maritimes, 
Lugged down the port like sea-beasts taken alive 
That scrape their bellies on sharp sands, 
Of which particulars Captain Dobbin keeps 
A ledger sticky with ink, 
Entries of time and weather, state of the moon, 
Nature of cargo and captain's name, 
For some mysterious and awful purpose 
Never divulged. 
For at night, when the stars mock themselves with lanterns, 
So late the chimes blow loud and faint 
Like a hand shutting and unshutting over the bells, 
Captain Dobbin, having observed from bed 
The lights, like a great fiery snake, of the Comorin 
Going to sea, will note the hour 
For subsequent recording in his gazette. 
But the sea is really closer to him than this, 
Closer to him than a dead, lovely woman, 
For he keeps bits of it, like old letters, 
Salt tied up in bundles 
Or pressed flat, 
What you might call a lock of the sea's hair, 
So Captain Dobbin keeps his dwarfed memento, 
His urn-burial, a chest of mummied waves, 
Gales fixed in print, and the sweet dangerous countries 
Of shark and casuarina-tree, 
Stolen and put in coloured maps, 
Like a flask of seawater, or a bottled ship, 
A schooner caught in a glass bottle; 
But Captain Dobbin keeps them in books, 
Crags of varnished leather 
Pimply with gilt, by learned mariners 
And masters of hydrostatics, or the childish tales 
Of simple heroes, taken by Turks or dropsy. 
So nightly he sails from shelf to shelf 
Or to the quadrants, dangling with rusty screws, 
Or the hanging-gardens of old charts, 
So old they bear the authentic protractor-lines, 
Traced in faint ink, as fine as Chinese hairs. 
Over the flat and painted atlas-leaves 
His reading-glass would tremble, 
Over the fathoms, pricked in tiny rows, 
Water shelving to the coast. 
Quietly the bone-rimmed lens would float 
Till, through the glass, he felt the barbèd rush 
Of bubbles foaming, spied the albicores, 
The blue-fined admirals, heard the wind-swallowed cries 
Of planters running on the beach 
Who filched their swags of yams and ambergris, 
Birds' nests and sandalwood, from pastures numbed 
By the sun's yellow, too meek for honest theft; 
But he, less delicate robber, climbed the walls, 
Broke into dozing houses 
Crammed with black bottles, marish wine 
Crusty and salt-corroded, fading prints, 
Sparkle-daubed almanacs and playing cards, 
With rusty cannon, left by the French outside, 
Half-buried in sand,
Even to the castle of Queen Pomaree 
In the Yankee's footsteps, and found her throne-room piled 
With golden candelabras, mildewed swords, 
Guitars and fowling-pieces, tossed in heaps 
With greasy cakes and flung-down calabashes. 
Then Captain Dobbin's eye, 
That eye of wild and wispy scudding blue, 
Voluptuously prying, would light up 
Like mica scratched by gully-suns, 
And he would be fearful to look upon 
And shattering in his conversation; 
Nor would he tolerate the harmless chanty, 
No 'Shenandoah', or the dainty mew 
That landsmen offer in a silver dish 
To Neptune, sung to pianos in candlelight. 
Of these he spoke in scorn, 
For there was but one way of singing 'Stormalong', 
He said, and that was not really singing, 
But howling, rather?shrieked in the wind's jaws 
By furious men; not tinkled in drawing-rooms 
By lap-dogs in clean shirts. 
And, at these words, 
The galleries of photographs, men with rich beards, 
Pea-jackets and brass buttons, with folded arms, 
Would scowl approval, for they were shipmates, too, 
Companions of no cruise by reading-glass, 
But fellows of storm and honey from the past? 
'The Charlotte, Java, ',' 
'Knuckle and Fred at Port au Prince,' 
'William in his New Rig,' 
Even that notorious scoundrel, Captain Baggs, 
Who, as all knew, owed Dobbin Twenty Pounds 
Lost at fair cribbage, but he never paid, 
Or paid 'with the slack of the tops'l sheets' 
As Captain Dobbin frequently expressed it. 
There were their faces, grilled a trifle now, 
Cigar-hued in various spots 
By the brown breath of sodium-eating years, 
On quarter-decks long burnt to the water's edge, 
A resurrection of the dead by chemicals. 
And the voyages they had made, 
Their labours in a country of water, 
Were they not marked by inadequate lines 
On charts tied up like skins in a rack? 
Or his own Odys