"Lost Harbor" (sometimes known as "Sailor, Rest Your Oar") refers to three versions of a poem by American poet Leslie Nelson Jennings: a sonnet first published in 1927, a sestet published in 1949, and a sonnet sequence published in 1963. The six-line sestet version has been recited hundreds of times in memorial ceremonies and funerals for sailors, especially submariners. The best-known sentence of "Lost Harbor" is "Sailor, rest your oar." (It is often pluralized as "Sailor, rest your oars.") That sentence has been quoted many times in printed obituaries, in spoken eulogies, on monuments, and on tombstones for sailors. Author Jennings considered himself "a protégé of poet George Sterling," who was acclaimed for poetry about the sea and sailors.Protégé quotation from untitled biographical paragraph, , inside back flap of dust jacket. Sterling's acclaim: "No American poet has loved the sea better, nor—with the possible exception of George Sterling—has sung of it so well.": "Lodge's Poems: 'A New England Swinburne' Describes the Poet Best," New York Times Review of Books (Mar. 24, 1912), p. 161, reviewing Poems and Dramas of George Cabot Lodge. Sterling wrote more than eighty poems about the sea and sailors, including some of his most-highly regarded: "After Sunset," "The Ballad of the Swabs" (named one of the best poems of 1925), "The Ballad of Two Seas" (named one of the best poems of 1914), "Duandon," "The Lusitania" (The wife and daughter of George Ansel Sterling Ryerson—Sterling's first cousin once removed on his father's side—were on the RMS Lusitania when a German u-boat sank it. The daughter survived; the wife did not.), "The Master-Mariner," "Ocean Sunsets," "Old Anchors," "Sad Sea-Horizons," "The Sailing of Keats," "Sails," "The Sea-Fog," "The Setting of Antares," "Sonnets on the Sea's Voice," "Sonnets by the Night Sea," etc. Jennings wrote "Lost Harbor" as a memorial for his mentor Sterling.
The writer of the poems American poet Leslie Nelson Jennings (1890–1972) was called by critic Stephen Philips "perhaps the most versatile and splendid maker of sonnets America has produced."Stephen Philips, "The New Lyricism," Poetry Review v. 21 (1930), p. 119. Henry Hazlitt wrote: "His work combines remarkable technical skill with depth and sincerity of feeling.""Critical Comments on the Poetry of Leslie Nelson Jennings," Mill Talk & Other Poems, (New York: Fine Editions Press, 1942), inside back flap. August Derleth said: "He is a sensitive, sure craftsman, whose work is in the best tradition of English poetry."Footsteps of Departure, inside back flap.
Jennings was born in Ware, Massachusetts September 6, 1890. When he was five, his family moved to San Francisco. He grew up there, worked on newspapers, and met poet George Sterling. Under the poet's guidance, Jennings learned to write poems. In 1915, illness forced Jennings to quit journalism and move to the sleepy village of Rutherford, California in rural Napa Valley.Louis Untermeyer, ed., Modern American Poetry (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company: 1919, 1921), p. 368. Jennings corresponded with Sterling, who helped Jennings sell poems, first to California magazines, then in 1916 to national publications."Contributors," New Republic, v. 32 (November 29, 1922), p. 26. 45 pieces of Jennings' 1917–1927 correspondence with Sterling are in the "Sterling (George) Papers, 1895-1927," Huntington Library. Jennings' early poems appeared in Poetry, New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the prestigious Scribner's. Dozens of newspapers reprinted his early poems.
In 1921, Jennings moved to New York City. He worked as a magazine editor while continuing to write poetry. He sold poems to the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Times, Nation, and the Saturday Review of Literature. 62 of his poems appeared in the New Yorker. Two books of his poems were published: Mill Talk & Other Poems and Footsteps of Departure. Jennings died March 27, 1972, in St. Petersburg, Florida."Leslie Nelson Jennings, 81, Poet and Editor, Is Dead," New York Times (March 30, 1972), p. 41.
Creation of the poems The story of the three versions of Jennings' "Lost Harbor" begins with Jennings' feelings after his mentor George Sterling committed suicide on November 17, 1926.
First version: 1927 sonnet After Sterling's death, Jennings wrote "Lost Harbor," a memorial sonnet to Sterling. Jennings used the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet. It consisted of two parts, a first eight-line section expressing one idea, followed by a six-line section making a related but different observation.
Synopsis Jennings' first section imagines from Sterling's point of view why Sterling killed himself. Jennings addresses the reader and opens with a sailor's "love of life." Many people who knew Sterling had commented on the poet's remarkable enthusiasm for living.Charles Warren Stoddard, "To George Sterling," Sunset v. 20 n. 5 (March 1908), p. 502; reprinted in Henry Meade Bland, ed., A Day in the Hills (San Francisco: [privately printed], 1926), pp. 53-54; reprinted in David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, eds., The Shadow of the Unattained: The Letters of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2005), pp. 294-295. Clark Ashton Smith, "George Sterling: Poet and Friend," Shadow of the Unattained, pp. 298-302, especially pages 299 and 300. H. L. Mencken, Sterling (San Francisco: John Henry Nash, 1926). Mencken's text is reproduced in the Wikipedia article List of memorials to George Sterling, in the section "Memorials in print". Jennings then gives a nautical analogy. He tells how the sailor's love of the ups and downs of life required a responsive helm——the control that steers his ship——but when his body sprang leaks and his mind mutinied against him, the sailor sought a peaceful harbor.
The beginning of the poem's second section is not clear if Jennings' first four lines speak to the reader or to the sailor. The second section first describes a "port of no return" with ships at anchor, then quietly departing in the night, leaving only an eddy in the water. Seagulls often follow departing ships; Jennings tells the gulls to stop. Jennings addresses the sailor, assuring him that he can stop rowing and that "No tangled wreckage" will be found.
Text of sonnet
First publications Jennings sold his "Lost Harbor" sonnet to New Republic (which at that time, according to British poet and critic Leonard A. G. Strong, editor of The Best Poems of 1927, "keeps the highest standard in verse" of any general interest magazine in the United States or Britain). "Lost Harbor" appeared in the March 30, 1927 issue. Four newspapers reprinted the sonnet. In November, The Third Book of Modern Verse reprinted "Lost Harbor."Quotation from Leonard Strong: "Introduction" in Strong, ed., The Best Poems of 1927 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1928), p. xx. "Lost Harbor," New Republic v. 50 n. 643 (March 30, 1927), p. 13. Reprinted Springfield [Massachusetts] Daily Republican (August 6, 1932), p. 6; Biddlefield-Saco Maine Daily Journal (August 20, 1932), p. 4; Sacramento Bee (August 27, 1932), p. 22; Fresno Bee (September 4, 1932), p. 16. "Lost Harbor" in Jessie Belle Rittenhouse, ed., The Third Book of Modern Verse: A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American Poets (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), p. 195. November 1927 publication date: Sidney Williams, "Literary Notes," Philadelphia Inquirer (November 5, 1927), p. 23. After those reprints, the poem was largely unnoticed until after World War II, as explained below.
Second version: 1949 sestet During World War II, at the behest of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt the United States military documented its own administrative and operational events for use in producing detailed, definitive histories to be completed after the war. As the United States Navy's contribution, teams of officers produced a 300-volume series titled United States Naval Administrative Histories of World War II, so detailed it was declared "Top Secret" and not published. The series included a two-volume history finished in 1946, Submarine Commands, edited by USN Captain Richard George Voge.William C. Heimdahl and Edward J. Marolda, Guide to United States Naval Administrative Histories of World War II ([Washington D.C.]: Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, 1976), pp. 147-148.
Next the United States Naval Institute commissioned writer Theodore Roscoe to delete secret information and technical descriptions from Submarine Commands and produce for general readers an authoritative history of United States submarine warfare in World War II. In his book, United States Submarine Operations in World War II, Roscoe included a section titled "United States Submarine Losses in World War II." After a list of the 52 lost submarines, Roscoe placed the last six lines of the "Lost Harbor" sonnet from The Third Book of Modern Verse. Roscoe did not tell his readers that this excerpt was only a portion of "Lost Harbor" and not Jennings' entire poem.Theodore Roscoe, ed., United States Submarine Operations in World War II (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1949), p. 498; The Third Book of Modern Verse as Roscoe's source: p. viii. Text of sestet
Third version: 1963 sonnet sequence Jennings had written another sonnet in memory of George Sterling, titled "Vale". He wrote it in late 1926, immediately after Sterling's suicide. He sent the poem to Harold Vinal, the editor and publisher of the magazine Voices: A Forum for the Poet. Vinal rushed "Vale" into print on the first page of the next issue of Voices.Quotation from Leonard Strong: "Introduction" in Strong, ed., The Best Poems of 1927 (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1928), p. xx. "Vale" original appearance: Voices: An Open Forum for the Poets v. 6 n. 2–3 (December 1926 – January 1927), p. 48.
In the early 1960s, Jennings returned to "Vale." He decided to combine it with "Lost Harbor" into a sonnet sequence. Jennings put his 1927 sonnet "Lost Harbor" first, and appended his earlier "Vale" after "Lost Harbor", deleting the title "Vale.""Vale" as part of "Lost Harbor" sonnet sequence: Jennings, Footsteps of Departure, p. 39.
The result was a brief sonnet sequence (only two sonnets long), titled "Lost Harbor" with the subtitle "(for George Sterling)." Jennings placed the sonnet sequence in his 1963 book, Footsteps of Departure.Sonnet sequence: Footsteps of Departure, pp. 38-39. Footsteps of Departure also included another sonnet memorializing Sterling: "The Unfinished Sonnet: for George Sterling," Footsteps of Departure, p. 37.
Popularity with navies and sailors The United States Naval Institute published Theodore Roscoe's United States Submarine Operations in World War II in December 1949. The book generated enthusiastic reviews and sold quickly. A second printing was rushed out the next month, then a third in March 1950. Submarine Operations became a required textbook for submarine trainees, and the book kept selling. By December 1965 it had gone through eight printings, exposing thousands of readers to Roscoe's six-line version of "Lost Harbor"Roscoe, ed., United States Submarine Operations in World War II, eighth printing (1965), p. ii.
Paperback publisher Bantam Books hired Roscoe to condense Submarine Operations to fit into a small mass-market paperback, Pig Boats: The True Story of the Fighting Submarines of World War II. Pig Boats also featured Roscoe's "Submarine Losses" section, including the six-line version of "Lost Harbor."Theodore Roscoe, ed., Pig Boats: The True Story of the Fighting Submarines of World War II (New York: Bantam Books, 1958), p. 445. The book was published in December 1958, reprinted the next month, and sold steadily for more than two decades, going into its eighth printing in September 1982.Roscoe, Pig Boats (1982), p. ii.