The ships he served of old,
When blood was young and hot,
Long wrecked or scrapped or sold;
Their very names forgot;
The ships that raced the wool,
The grain, the jute, the tea,
Titania beautiful,
And proud Thermophylae;
Cold Alps of shining snow,
He knows them one and all,
The fast ships and the slow,
The big ships and the small,
Knows too each glimmering queen
Or carven king they bore,
Each dragon gold and green,
Armed knight or turbaned Moor . . .
The last rose leaves the skies,
The river breeze blows chill;
But still with age-dimmed eyes
He dreams, as old men will,
His pipe between his lips;
Still, dreaming, seems to see
The lost and lovely ships
That no one sees but he.
Notes
From THAMES-SIDE YESTERDAYS, by Cicely Fox Smith, published by F. Lewis, LEIGH-ON-SEA, UK, © 1945, pp. 36-37.
This poem is a fragment of "The Ship-Keeper."
The poet claims to have written this with a particular ship keeper in mind, one that she no doubt encountered while she was resident in Victoria, British Columbia. She writes:
"He was a great yarner, as most ship-keepers were. Theirs was, after all, a solitary sort of job, and memory after a while becomes a sad sort of companion."
Jim Saville
Adding your comment:
