There is a memory stays upon old ships,
A weightless cargo in the musty hold,—
Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips,
Of stormy midnights,—and a tale untold.
They have remembered islands in the dawn,
And windy capes that tried their slender spars,
And tortuous channels where their keels have gone,
And calm blue nights of stillness and the stars.
Ah, never think that ships forget a shore,
Or bitter seas, or winds that made them wise;
There is a dream upon them, evermore;
And there be some who say that sunk ships rise
To seek familiar harbors in the night,
Blowing in mists, their spectral sails like light.
_Orrick Johns_
Orrick Johns was born at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1887. He schooled
himself to be an advertising copy writer, his creative work being
kept as an avocation.
_Asphalt and Other Poems_ (1917) is a queer mixture. Cheap stanzas
crowd against lines of singular beauty; poor dialect verse elbows
lyrics that sing without a false note. The same incongruity is
evident in _Black Branches_ (1920), where much that is strained and
artificial mingles with poetry that is not only spontaneous but
searching. At his best, notably in the refreshing “Country Rhymes,”
Johns is a true singer, a lyricist of no little stature.