In just four lines, a speaker looks back on a life at sea and sums it up with a shrug. The title, "Old salt," tells us he's a veteran sailor, and the poem reads like his confession. He sets two figures side by side: the seal, who is imagined as the sea's chaplain, a kind of calm, holy attendant, and himself, who is the sea's fool. One serves the sea with dignity. The other simply gets played by it.
Then comes the surprising turn. He took his crew "to the devil," and "there we drank." It's hard to say exactly what that means. It could be a wild shipwreck, a trip into dangerous waters, or just a long, reckless night of drinking. Judging by the tone, he doesn't sound especially sorry. There's rueful humor here, and maybe a little pride. The mood is salty, wry, and a bit haunted, like an old man telling a story he's told many times, never quite owning up to what it cost his crew.