Explore "Harp Song of the Dane Women" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What is a woman that you forsake her, / And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, / To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
She has no house to lay a guest in -- / But one chill bed for all to rest in, / That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.
She has no strong white arms to fold you, / But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you -- / Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.
Yet, when the signs of summer thicken, / And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken, / Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken --
Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters. / You steal away to the lapping waters, / And look at your ship in her winter quarters.
You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables, / The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables -- / To pitch her sides and go over her cables.
Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow, / And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow. / Is all we have left through the months to follow.
Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her, / And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, / To go with the old grey Widow-maker?