Billy knew how to make the ocean ring
with cloud-birds or the humming monsters in
the deep. The Handsome Sailor, mimicking
the illiterate nightingale, climbed up to win
his supper from the stars, and sang. He sang
tunes he made up to a larger seafowl scream-
ing near the foretop. Barely a child of time,
from the maintop the angel had to hang,
for gagged by lies he had no words when quick
as flame from a night cannon his right arm
shot out and Claggart dropped. So through the mist
Billy ascended, and ascending took
the full rose of the dawn. Wordless his charm,
sleepy, now oozy weeds about him twist.