It does not have the dramatic flair of Ezra Pound’s translation of The Seafarer nor the lyricism of John Masefield’s Sea-Fever. Yet, The Indifferent Mariner by American poet Arthur Macy (1842-1904) is compelling in its own right. Consisting of seven stanzas of four lines each, the poem paints an unvarnished portrait of a mariner.
“I’m a tough old salt,” the speaker in the poem declares at the outset. He does not give a damn which direction the wind is blowing, where his ship is headed, or whether it’s a cargo vessel or a whaler. His indifference to external events is born of a hard-nosed realism:
You never can stop the wind when it blows,
And you can’t stop the rain from raining;
Then why, oh, why, go a-piping of your eye
When there’s no sort o’ use in complaining?
He describes himself and his spartan life at sea in simple but potent words:
My face is browned and my lungs are sound,
And my hands they are big and calloused.
I’ve a little brown jug I sometimes hug,
And a little bread and meat for ballast.
His daily grog (strong alcoholic drink) is a source of consolation. He drinks a “a little more” of it when the weather is cold. When he is sick, it makes him “sleep the sleep of the godly.” And “whether the jug’s my failing” does not bother him. This fatalistic view of life is reaffirmed in the poem’s last two lines:
It’s never I care a damn just where
I sail, so long’s I’m sailing.
Complete text of the poem
The Indifferent Mariner
by Arthur Macy
I’m a tough old salt, and it’s never I care
A penny which way the wind is,
Or whether I sight Cape Finisterre,
Or make a port at the Indies.
Some folks steer for a port to trade,
And some steer north for the whaling;
Yet never I care a damn just where
I sail, so long’s I’m sailing.
You never can stop the wind when it blows,
And you can’t stop the rain from raining;
Then why, oh, why, go a-piping of your eye
When there’s no sort o’ use in complaining?
My face is browned and my lungs are sound,
And my hands they are big and calloused.
I’ve a little brown jug I sometimes hug,
And a little bread and meat for ballast.
But I keep no log of my daily grog,
For what’s the use o’ being bothered?
I drink a little more when the wind’s offshore,
And most when the wind’s from the no’th’ard.
Of course with a chill if I’m took quite ill,
And my legs get weak and toddly,
At the jug I pull, and turn in full,
And sleep the sleep of the godly.
But whether I do or whether I don’t,
Or whether the jug’s my failing,
It’s never I care a damn just where
I sail, so long’s I’m sailing.
Click here to play and download a song version of the poem.
About the poet
Although Arthur Macy was not a mariner, he hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, and had an affinity with the sea. From the Introduction to ‘Poems’ by Arthur Macy published in 1905:
Arthur Macy was a Nantucket boy of Quaker extraction. His name alone is evidence of this, for it is safe to say that a Macy, wherever found in the United States, is descended from that sturdy old Quaker who was one of those who bought Nantucket from the Indians, paid them fairly for it, treated them with justice, and lived on friendly terms with them. In many ways Arthur Macy showed that he was a Nantucketer and, at least by descent, a Quaker. He often used phrases peculiar to our island in the sea, and was given, in conversation at least, to similes which smacked of salt water. Almost the last time I saw him he said, “I’m coming round soon for a good long gam.”
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