Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ANCHORS, by CICELY FOX SMITH Poet's Biography First Line: In a breaker's yard by the millwall docks Last Line: "for the outward bound!" Subject(s): Anchors | ||||||||
IN a breaker's yard by the Millwall Docks, With its piled-up litter of sheaveless blocks, Stranded hawsers and links of cable, A cabin lamp and a chartroom table, Nail-sick timbers and heaps of metal Rusty and red as an old tin kettle, Scraps that were ships in the years gone by, Fluke upon stock the anchors lie. Every sort of a make of anchor For trawler or tugboat, tramp or tanker, Anchors little and anchors big For every build and for every rig, Old wooden-stocked ones fit for the Ark, Stockless and squat ones, ugly and stark, Anchors heavy and anchors small, Mushroom and grapnel and kedge and all. Mouldy old mudhooks, there they lie! Have they ever a dream as the days go by Of the tug of the tides on coasts afar, A Northern light and a Southern star, The mud and sand of a score of seas, And the chuckling ebb of a hundred quays, The harbour sights and the harbour smells, The swarming junks and the temple bells? Roar of the surf on coral beaches, Rose-red sunsets on landlocked reaches, Strange gay fishes in cool lagoons, And palm-thatched cities in tropic noons; Song of the pine and sigh of the palm, River and roadstead, storm and calm -- Do they dream of them all now their work is done, And the neaps and the springs at the last are one? And only the tides of London flow, Restless and ceaseless, to and fro; Only the traffic's rush and roar Seems a breaking wave on a far-off shore, And the wind that wanders the sheds among The ghost of an old-time anchor song: -- "Bright plates and pannikins To sail the seas around, And a new donkey's breakfast For the outward bound!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FORGING OF THE ANCHOR by SAMUEL FERGUSON ANCHOR SONG by RUDYARD KIPLING IN HARBOR (ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND) by ALEXANDER KINMAN LAING WEIGHING ANCHOR by MABEL F. MARTIN I LOVE ALL THINGS THAT CLUSTER ROUND THE SEA by JOHN RICHARD MORELAND SAIL-BOAT (BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI) by LOUISE CRENSHAW RAY SHIPS AT ANCHOR by ELEANOR G. R. YOUNG UP AND DOWN I GO, MY STOCK by LAWRENCE SAIL A CHANNEL RHYME by CICELY FOX SMITH |
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