A Mariner Poem by John Joy Bell

A rare good life I've surely had
In fifty year at sea;
A finer life, I tells ye, lad,
I don't believe could be,
An' yet ye say I'm lookin' sad,
An' ask what vexes me.

Ah, well! 'tis just them bad complaints
That young folk seldom gets,
Unless they happens to be saints,
Or owin' foolish debts -
Them bad complaints that some polite
Landlubbers call regrets.

'Tis not regrets for what I've done,
Nor yet for what I've been - - - -
The Lord, I hope, will right the one
An' make the other clean - - -
But my regrets is just the things --
The things I might have seen.

The Lord He gives we mariners
The grandest life, says I:
He gives us both the hemispheres
To live in. or to die;
He gives us nearly all the world
To sail and freely spy.

An' there be wonderous things to see
Wherever winds do blow:
Such things as now comes back to me
Too late to rightly know - - - -
I wish I'd had them poor old eyes
'Bout thirty years ago.

I sometimes fears as, when I'm dead,
The Lord will say to me --
'Come, Mariner, hold up thy head
An' tell Us o' the sea --
The sea I gave wi' all its sights,
For fifty years to thee'

An' I can only cry, 'O Lord,
O Lord, a fool was I,
Not searchin' for my best reward
In sea an' shore an' sky - - - -
I hardly thought o' such great things
Till sailin' days was by.'

I've told ye yarns a thosan' times,
An' ye have called 'em great,
But, lad, they'd be like silly rhymes
To what I could relate
If 'd had seein' eyes when I
Was boy, an' man, an' mate.

Oh, lad, I think weak folks like you
That sickens on the Clyde
Sees far more in a voyage or two
O' wonders great an' wide
Than mariners that spends their lives
Wi' time an' wind an' tide.

For mariners be careless men:
Their sense is mostly keen
For weather, land an' grog - - - An' when
I says my prayers, 'twill mean --
'O Lord, forgive this mariner
For all he might have seen.'