Mate Poem by Cicely Fox Smith

A great big brute of a bawling bluenose -
Came through the hawse-pipe and don't care who knows!

Lives on holystones - wallows in paint -
That fond o' prayer-books you'd take him for a saint.

Voice like a foghorn, fist like a block,
First time he hits you, you think you've struck a rock.

Face like a seaboot, never seen to smile:
When he hails the topsail yard you hear him half a mile.

The sea's been his school and the wide world his college:
What he don't know of sailorin' darn well ain't knowledge!