The last night of November
All dreaming as I lay,
I saw a fisher toiling
In stormy seas and grey, —
A glimmering seine-net casting
In foam as white as wool . . .
And sometimes it came empty,
And sometimes it came full.
That port that fisher hailed from
Was the port of Heaven above:
The shining net he cast there
Was the net of Christ His love.
That seine it shone like silver
Or the Milky Way come down . . .
And, oh! the catch he took there
Was the souls of those who drown.
Notes
From SMALL CRAFT: Sailor Ballads and Chantys, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by George H. Doran Co., New York, US, © 1919, p. 77.
One of the few explicitly religious poems composed by this poet, in this case during the middle of World War 1. The War drove some to question their faith, and others to re-embrace it.
Charley Noble
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