The old man lies where midnight lamps keep watch along the quiet ward, And pale machines keep patient count of breaths that ebb and flow; His bones are worn like weathered spars long labouring against the gale, Yet memory walks bright meadows where the evening breezes blow. He sees again the pasture path beyond the gate and orchard fall, And there beside him panting glad they rest against the old stone wall.

When once the Spithead nightingales sang out across the midnight tide, And watch-bells tolled from shore to shore where fleets and kingdoms rode the wide, The Curia Regis heard them faint, then drew the purse-strings hard and fast, While gold that once had armed the ships was scattered to the winds and cast; For silver fed the courtly feast, and vanity was richly crowned, Whilst iron decks grew bare and still, and shipwrights wandered empty round; Yet far beyond the western foam, beneath a moon of blood and flame, The Dragon stirred within his lair, and counted every mast by name.

My clubs are for another now; the years have had the better claim, For age and slow infirmity have called the halt upon my game.  No more the frosted morning grass beneath a pale September sky, No more the eager stride to meet the waking day as dawn drew nigh. The summer heat, the autumn leaves, the robin singing from the thorn, Will greet the men who follow on as they have greeted every morn. The course will neither mourn nor pause because one player stays away; It asks no more than honest hearts who come to spend another day.

Beyond the Bridge the mornings break on leagues of grass still wet with dew, And hounds long vanished from our sight go streaming out in twos and few; They quarter hills for phantom scents, they harry winds that cannot stay, And tear in sudden loops and turns as pups released at close of day. With ears flung back and bright keen eyes they thunder where the skylarks climb, While clover bends beneath their charge and brooks keep measure to their time; No whistle calls, no leash restrains, no weary limb demands its due, Only the old delight of dogs and all the happy things they knew.

I sit in judgement robed beneath the alabaster dome, Well-drilled in liberal canons forged to make the wolf at home; I learned to brand the steadfast man a danger to the state, Whilst sleek marauders, smooth of tongue, passed smiling through the gate. 

No ledger kept by mortal mind has marked a crime that dogs have done, No ancient court has named them foe nor cast their kind from hearth or land; For through the long domesticked years since first our wandering tribes were one, They chose our fire, our fields, our roads, and walked beside the human band.

She slipped her moorings, proud and new, in nineteen fifty-eight’s first light, 

They walk the wards where midnight hums and quiet lamps defy the gloom, 

Upon the deck in rinsed dawn-light, where tar and salt lay sharp as brine, The Captain’s hound would pace the planks and test the wind with lifted head; Below, where lantern halos swam in hoops of amber, faint and fine, The ship’s grey cat slid through the beams like smoke the night had shed.

From Vancouver’s pine-dark rim where Pacific rollers boom, A Royal Navy Thirty-Two stood out beneath a gull-grey gloom; Her yards were squared to southern airs, her pennant snapped like flame, And Halifax lay far ahead, a star without a name; No consort shared her outward road, no friendly mast in sight, Only the heave of iron swells and old oak fading white; Thus south she drove with measured pride and guns in ordered tier, A wooden will with canvas lungs and discipline for gear.

Why snaps the Crescent kennel loud while Canterbury throws me pies, And swears I dropped from angel clouds with gravy dripping from the skies, I only wag at friend and foe and sniff what any hound has smelt, Yet still they bark I’m heaven’s joke while others say I’m Heaven’s help.

One sister spun the bobbin bright, her song a river through the years, She drew the thread from memory deep, from laughter, frost, and tears.