It must have been off a pirate trip,
In a life forgot 'o me,
That I saw the Barbary pirate ship
Come close-hauled out of the sea;
She crawled in under a goat-cropped scaur
Beneath the fisher-huts,
And she sent a dozen o' men ashore
To fill her water-butts.
I clambered up where the cliff sprung sheer
Till I looked upon her decks
And saw the plunder of half-a-year
And the loot of her scuttled wrecks;
There were gems and ivory, plate and pearl,
And Tyrian rugs a-pile,
And, set in the midst, was a milk-white girl,
The loot of a Grecian isle.
As white as the breasted terns that flit
Was the smooth arm's rounded shape
As she idly played with a pomegranate
To anger a chained grey ape;
And her Sun-God's self for diadem
Had kissed her curls to gold;
But blue—sea-blue as the sapphire gem,
Her eyes were cold, sea-cold.
And, gleam of shoulder and glint of tress,
They sailed ere the sun went down
And sold her, same as a black negress,
For the marts o' Carthage town,
Where she lived, mayhap, of her indolent grace,
Content with her silks and rings,
Or rose, by way of her wits, to place
Her foot on the necks of kings.
The deuce can tell you how this may be,
'Tis far as I take the tale;
For it's lives upon lives ago, you see,
That the Barbary men set sail;
So I only know she was ivory white,
As white as a sea-bird lone;
And her eyes were wonderful blue and bright
And hard as a sapphire stone.

The New Rowing.

The Cork Examiner on Sir Percy Scott's letter:—

To be more accurate, this is how one puts it to one's neighbour after dinner, when—the ladies having removed themselves, and the necessity for mere social chit-chat being over—we men are at last able to devote ourselves to the affairs of empire.