Transcript of The Seven Seas
A Song of the English by Rudyard Kipling, read for LibriVox .org by Phone Fare is our lot, O goodly is our heritage! Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth! For the Lord our God most high, He hath made the deep as dry, He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth. Yea, though we sinned, and our rulers went from righteousness, Deep in all dishonour, though we stained our garments hem, O be ye not dismayed, though we stumbled and we strayed, We were led by evil counsellors, the Lord shall deal with them. Hold ye the faith, the faith our Father sealed us, Whoring not with visions, overwise and overstale, Except ye pay the Lord single heart and single sword, Of your children in their bondage shall he ask them treble tale. Keep ye the law, be swift in all obedience, Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford, Make ye sure to each his own that he reap what he has sown, By the peace among our peoples let men know we serve the Lord. Hear now a song, a song of broken interludes, A song of little cunning, of a singer nothing worth, Through the naked words and mean may ye see the truth between, As the singer knew and touched it in the ends of all the earth. The Coast -Wise Lights by Richard Kipling Our brows are wreath with spindrift, and the weed is on our knees, Our loins are battered neath us by the swinging, smoking seas, From wreath and rock and scurry, over headland, nests and voe, The Coast -Wise Lights of England watch the ships of England go, Through the endless summer evenings on the lineless level floors, Through the yelling channel tempest when the siren hoots and roars, By day the dipping house -flag and by night the rocket's trail, As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail. We bridge across the dark and bid the helmsman have a care, The flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer, From our vexed iries head to gale we bind in burning chains, The lover from the sea -rim drawn, his love in English names, We greet the clippers wing and wing that race the southern woo, We warn the crawling cargo -tanks of Bremen, Leith and Hoh, To each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea, The white wall -sided warships are the whalers of Dundee, Come up, come in from eastward from the guard -ports of the morn, Beat up, beat in from southerly, oh gypsies of the horn, Swift shuttles of an empire's loom that weave us main to main, The coast -wise lights of England give you welcome back again, Go, get you gone up channel with the sea -crust on your plates, Go, get you into London with the burden of your freight,