[143] Harp Song of the Dane Women

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in---
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you---
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken---

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables---
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker ?

      -- Rudyard Kipling

This poem pretty much speaks for itself - I could rhapsodize about the
compelling rhythms, the unusual rhyme-scheme, the evocative imagery; but
I won't. I will say, however, that 'the pale suns and the stray bergs
nest in' is an utterly beautiful image.

m.

Kipling: See Poem #17, Poem #29 and Poem #43

PS. Lovely, lovely poem - t.

From: "Jeremy Brown" <fvoneandall@>

I was quite amused to read Christopher Hitchens, writing in
"The Atlantic"[1], mistake the subject of this poem with warfare. Even if I
wasn't a deep sea fisherman (though never a sealer), I believe this
would still remain for me one of the most affecting poems of man and
nature. JB

[1] "The Atlantic": http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/06/hitchens.htm

From: "Levana Taylor" <levanataylor@>

This poem was very effectively set to music by Gordon Bok, recorded on his
album "Schooners".

-LT

From: Uri And/Or Talya <uri.walkabout@>

this song appear at the first page of =A8the Long Ships=A8 by Frans Gunnar
Bengtsson which is the best account of how the vikings of the era lived and
died, the whole of the book once read can indeed be summerized by this short
poem, indeed I think I failed to understand it in its fullest untill I read
the book.

--
Uri & Talya Do Central America !