Country Sentiment

THE "ALICE JEAN".

     One moonlit night a ship drove in,
       A ghost ship from the west,
     Drifting with bare mast and lone tiller,
       Like a mermaid drest
     In long green weed and barnacles:
       She beached and came to rest.

     All the watchers of the coast
       Flocked to view the sight,
     Men and women streaming down
       Through the summer night,
     Found her standing tall and ragged
       Beached in the moonlight.

     Then one old woman looked and wept
       "The 'Alice Jean'?  But no!
     The ship that took my Dick from me
       Sixty years ago
     Drifted back from the utmost west
       With the ocean's flow?

     "Caught and caged in the weedy pool
       Beyond the western brink,
     Where crewless vessels lie and rot
       in waters black as ink.
     Torn out again by a sudden storm
       Is it the 'Jean', you think?"

     A hundred women stared agape,
       The menfolk nudged and laughed,
     But none could find a likelier story
       For the strange craft.
     With fear and death and desolation
       Rigged fore and aft.

     The blind ship came forgotten home
       To all but one of these
     Of whom none dared to climb aboard her:
       And by and by the breeze
     Sprang to a storm and the "Alice Jean"
       Foundered in frothy seas.