She can weave a web of magic for the unsuspecting foe,
She can scent the breath of Kultur leagues away,
She can hear a U-boat thinking in Atlantic depths below
And disintegrate it with a Martian ray;
She can feel her way by night
Through the minefield of the Bight;
She has all the tricks of science, grave and gay.

In the twinkle of a searchlight she can suffer a sea-change
From a collier to a _Shamrock_ under sail,
From a Hyper-super-Dreadnought, old Leviathan at range,
To a lightship or a whaler or a whale;
With some canvas and a spar
She can mock the morning star
As a haystack or the flotsam of a gale.

She's the derelict you chartered north of Flores outward-bound,
She's the iceberg that you sighted coming back,
She's the salt-rimed Biscay trawler heeling home to Plymouth Sound,
She's the phantom-ship that crossed the moon-beams' track;
She's the rock where none should be
In the Adriatic Sea,
She's the wisp of fog that haunts the Skagerrack.