The Wreckage

Love lit a beacon in thine eyes,
        And I out in the storm,
And lo! the night had taken wings;
        I dream me safe and warm.

Love lit a beacon in thine eyes,
        A wreckers light for me;
My heart is broken on the rocks;
        I perish in the sea.

Dora Sigerson Shorter

Dora Sigerson Shorter was an Irish poet and sculptor born in Dublin in 1866. She was one of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival, a movement that aimed to promote Irish literature and culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was also a close friend of W.B. Yeats and married the writer and journalist Clement King Shorter. Dora's work often dealt with themes of Irish nationalism and folklore, and she published several volumes of poetry before her untimely death in 1918.

Dora Sigerson Shorter

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Dora Sigerson Shorter, Simple Poetry

English

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Wrecked

The winds are singing a death-knell
Out on the main to-night;
The sky droops low -- and many a bark
That sailed from harbors bright,
    Like many an one before,
    Shall enter port no more:
And a wreck shall drift to some unknown shore
Before to-morrow's light.

The clouds are hanging a death-pall
Over the sea to-night;
The stars are veiled -- and the hearts that sailed
Away from harbors bright,
Shall sob their last for their quiet home --
And, sobbing, sink 'neath the whirling foam
Before the morning's light.

The waves are weaving a death-shroud
Out on the main to-night;
Alas! the last prayer whispered there
By lips with terror white!
    Over the ridge of gloom,
    Not a star will loom!
God help the souls that will meet...

Abram Joseph Ryan

The Light On The Wreck

Out there by the rocks, at the end of the bank,
In the mouth of the river, the Wanderer sank.
She is resting where meet the blue water and green,
And only her masts and her funnel are seen;
And you see, when is fading the sunsets last fleck,
On her foremast a lantern, a light on a wreck.

Tis a light on a wreck, warning ships to beware
Of the drowned iron hull of the Wanderer there;
And the ships that come in and go out in the night
Keep a careful lookout for the Wanderers light.
There are rules for the harbour and rules for the wave;
But all captains steer clear of the Wanderers grave.

And the stories of strong lives that ended in wrecks
Might be likened to lights over derelict decks;
Like the light where, in sight of the streets of the town,
In the...

Henry Lawson

When You Are On The Sea

How can I laugh or dance as others do,
        Or ply my rock or reel?
My heart will still return to dreams of you
        Beside my spinning-wheel.

My little dog he cried out in the dark,
        He would not whisht for me:
I took him to my side-why did he bark
        When you were on the sea?

I fear the red cock-if he crow to-night-
        I keep him close and warm,
Twere ill with me, if he should wake in fright
        And you out in the storm.

I dare not smile for fear my laugh would ring
        Across your dying ears;
O, if you, drifting, drowned, should hear me sing
        And think I had not tears.

I never thought the sea could wake such waves,
        Nor that such winds could be;
I never wept when other eyes grew...

Dora Sigerson Shorter

The Wreck Of The Hesperus

It was the schooner Hesperus,
    That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
    To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
    Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
    That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
    His pipe was in his month,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
    The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
    Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
    For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
    And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
    And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Ruin.

I know a cliff, whose steep and craggy brow
O'erlooks the troubled ocean, and spurns back
The advancing billow from its rugged base;
Yet many a goodly rood of land lies deep
Beneath the wild wave buried, which rolls on
Its course exulting o'er the prostrate towers
Of high cathedral--church--and abbey fair,--
Lifting its loud and everlasting voice
Over the ruins, which its depths enshroud,
As if it called on Time, to render back
The things that were, and give to life again
All that in dark oblivion sleeps below:--
Perched on the summit of that lofty cliff
A time-worn edifice o'erlooks the wave,
"Which greets the fisher's home-returning bark,"
And the young seaman checks his blithesome song
To hail the lonely ruin from the deep.

    Majestic in decay,...

Susanna Moodie

Kiama Revisited

We stood by the window and hearkened
To the voice of the runnels sea-driven,
While, northward, the mountain-heads darkened,
Girt round with the clamours of heaven.
One peak with the storm at his portal
Loomed out to the left of his brothers:
Sustained, and sublime, and immortal,
A king, and the lord of the others!
Beneath him a cry from the surges
Rang shrill, like a clarion calling;
And about him, the wind of the gorges
Went falling, and rising, and falling.
But I, as the roofs of the thunder
Were cloven with manifold fires,
Turned back from the wail and the wonder,
And dreamed of old days and desires.
A song that was made, I remembered
A song that was made in the gloaming
Of suns which are sunken and numbered
With times that my heart hath no h...

Henry Kendall