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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MYSTERY SHIP, by ANNA WHITE HARDINGER
First Line: Great ships have I seen come in to die
Last Line: Of the ship unearthed reluctantly?
First Line: Great ships have I seen come in to die
Last Line: Of the ship unearthed reluctantly?
Great ships have I seen come in to die,
Cast on the beach by waves thrust high,
Then, settle in quick engulfing sand
With only gulls at their last command.
My father's father, his father, too,
Have told strange tales of the sea they knew;
The havoc of storms -- of sailing men,
With death the reaper, now as then.
But of all the tales of my roving kin,
Ships going down and ships coming in:
What would they say of a ship coming up
Out of the sands like a tilted cup?
No riveted steel binds the bulwarks fast;
Pegged are its beams from keel to mast,
Now inching up by slow degrees;
Who knows its fateful obsequies?
Or the souls who invoked a ruthless God
As they sailed to their doom in gale stormshod?
Who knows the year ... the century
Of the ship unearthed reluctantly?
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