Luck Poem by Cicely Fox Smith

“Luck”
said Dan,
“Never no luck
come my way, sonny!
None o’ them widders with a nice little pile
Lookin’ for a sailor man
Looked at me -
Not she!
Money
Never stuck
To me the way it does to some folks;
Fortune never ‘ad no smile
For me the way she ‘as for some blokes;
An’ the only thing as ever I found
Was one ‘arf-crownd,
An’ then I was ‘ad -
It was bad.

Luck - I never ‘ad none,
But what’s the odds when you’ve done . . . ?
Say you marry a rich wider and she turns out a terror
(Which plenty do, an' no fatal error)
Life ain’t no catch with somebody shrieking:
‘Dan, wipe
Them boots on the mat!’
An’ ‘Dan, put out that filthy pipe!’
An’ ‘Dan, this’ an’ ‘Dan, that,’
Until you’re that fed up you go sneakin’
Downstairs in your socks
An’ off to the docks
An’ sign in the first
An’ maybe the worst
Sort o’ packet as comes along
To get out o’ reach o’ the old woman’s tongue.

Or say you win a nice packet
In a sweep, an' whack it
With your pals, or booze it,
Or put the blessed lot on an ‘orse an’ lose it
Well, I reckon you’re an ‘ole lot
Worse off than if you’d never got
No
Bloomin’ packet to blow.

Me,
Forty years now I’ve been follerin’ the sea;
Forty years I’ve been moseyin’ round,
An’ I’ve earned my pint and I’ve earned my pound,
The ships I’ve served in, small and large,
They’ve mostly give me a good discharge,
I’ve stood my trick an’ I’ve pulled my weight
From Sand’eads Light to the Golden Gate,
An’ takin’
In a manner o’ speakin’,
The rough an’ the smooth an’ the fair an’ the foul weather
All together,
Why, I reckon the times I’ve ‘ad
Ain’t been bad.
I ain’t been no outsize sinner, nor yet no plaster saint;
But as for bein’ a lucky man,”
Said Dan,
“Well, I ain’t.”