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(notes by Philip Holberton and John Radcliffe) |
the poem 
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Publication history
First published in the second issue of the new and ambitious Pall Mall Magazine of June 15th 1893. J P Collins notes in KJ 70 for July 1944 that Kipling's original title was "The Dipsea Chantey", Dipsea meanng 'Deep Sea', but that he was persuaded to change it by the Pall Mall editors. ORG (p. 5345) which lists the poem as Verse no. 587, notes that "The Dipsey Chantey", and "The Judgement of the Sea" were used in unauthorised editions.
In the Pall Mall the poem was illustrated by Laurence Housman, the younger brother of the poet A E Housman. Housman's title illustration can be found in Peter Keating between pp. 110 and 111.
It is collected in:
- The Seven Seas (1896)
- Inclusive Verse (1919)
- Definitive Verse (1940)
- Sussex Edition Volume 33, p. 19
- Burwash Edition, Volume 25
- The Worls of Rudyard Kipling (Wordsworth Poetry Library)
This is a celebration of the sea, though as Ann Weygandt has pointed out (p. 173), hardly a 'chantey', which was a worksong of the days of sail. Peter Keating (pp. 107-8) sees it as one of Kipling's most memorable sea poems:
Taking Revelation 21:1 as his text ("and the sea is no more"), Kipling launches into "The Last Chantey" with an imaginative verve that places it high among the many rollicking celebratory ballads of life at sea. The first response of the "jolly mariners" when God seeks their advice on whether He should "gather up the sea" is to remember the hardships they have endured and say, yes "God may sink the sea!" But one by one the shades of the people through the centuries who have depended on the sea, call for it to be preserved: Judas, cooling on the ice floe granted to him once a year, St Paul undertaking his perilous journeys in order to spread the Gospel, slaves who were flung overboard, gentle- men-adventurers and whale-fishers - all urge the mariners to hold to the traditions of the sea. This the mariners do, rejecting the heavenly alternative offered by God:Background
Must we sing for evermore
On the windless, glassy floor?
Take back your golden fiddles and we'll beat to open sea!
Kipling had made many sea journeys by his twenty-eighth year, when thio poem was written, and he was enduringly fascinated by the world of sailors and the sea. He wrote some forty tales about ships and the sea, the twenty poems in The Seven Seas and many others. He believed that without the sea the world of men, and indeed his own work, would have been very much the poorer.
He also wrote "The First Chantey", also collected in The Seven Seas, one of his excursions into pre-history, and another celebration of the greatness and mystery of the sea.
[epigraph] 'And there was no more sea.' From Revelations 21,1:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.[Verse 1]
the Vault above the Cherubim Ezekiel 10, 1: 'the firmament which was above the heads of the cherubims'.
Earth has passed away Revelations 21, 1: 'the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.'
[Verse 2]
barracout' An abbreviation for barracouta (more usually barracuda), a predatory fish (family Sphyraena) of tropical seas with sharp fang-like teeth for tearing flesh from bones.
[Verse 3]
The soul of Judas In "The Voyage of St. Brendan", from Lives of the Saints (p. 62) (Penguin Books 1965) it is told:
St. Brendan espied a shape in the sea which looked like a man perched on a rock. The saintly abbot asked him who he was and what crime he could have committed to have deserved such a fate.[Verse 6]
‘I am Judas Iscariot who foully bargained away the life of his Master. Jesus Christ’s unspeakable mercy has put me here. To me this is no place of punishment. It is the spot where my loving Saviour grants me respite in honour of His Resurrection.’
picaroon a small pirate ship.
[Verse 7]
frapped to 'frap' is to save a damaged ship from breaking in half by binding strong cable round and round the hull, as in the "Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens" (well known to Kipling) and in the terrible storm described in Acts 27,17: '...they used helps, undergirding the ship...'
woundily excessively, dreadfully
fourteen score A 'score' is twenty, thus fourteen score is 280. See Acts 27,37: 'We were in all in the ship two hundred, three score and sixteen souls', (which makes 276!).
under Malta Acts 28,1: “when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita.'
See also “The Manner of Men” in Limits and Renewals, where two of the seamen from Paul’s ship tell the tale of that voyage.
[Verse 8]
gentlemen-adventurers The Elizabethan captains who raided the Spanish Main and singed the King of Spain’s beard. See "Gloriana" and "Sumple Simon" in Rewards and Fairies
[Verse 9]
Gothavn Now Godhavn, a port on Disko Island off the west coast of Greenland
‘speckshioner the chief harpooner on a whaling ship.
flenching more commonly 'flensing', stripping the blubber off a whale
fleets of fair Dundee In the late 19th century, Dundee supported a fleet of sixteen whaling ships.
ice-blink the reflection from pack-ice. See "Quiquern" in The Second Jungle Book.
bowhead the Greenland right whale.
breaching leaping clear out of the water
whelm overwhelm, engulf, destroy
[Verse 13]
spindrift spray swept from wave-crests by a strong wind.
fulmar a seabird of northern waters, Fulmarus glacialis, the North Atlantic petrel. The 'molly-hawk', as sailors called it, followed whalers and sealers for the sake of the refuse thrown away at skinning or flensing time.
[P.H./J.R.]
©Philip Holberton and John Radcliffe 2011 All rights reserved
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